Cliffo - great idea with the portable hard drive. Unfortunately, I don't have the cash to put up for that before the trip, but here's an idea I had:
I know iPods can be used with card readers, but I have an old-school one that can't. I can, however, hook it up to any Mac and use it as a 5gb hard drive. Only thing is, I haven't seen any internet cafes in Europe w/ Macs for use. Does anyone know if these are common? If so, I can just take my iPod, hook it up, connect my camera, and dump everything over - with the peace of mind that I can take zillions of pictures.
Speaking of which, digital's my vote. I love using a 35mm SLR (as badly as I do it), but as far as point-and-shoot goes, digital is great - you can take tons of shots, review them, delete them if the lighting is bad, and bad snaps don't cost you a penny! And inkjet photo printers are so cheap now, you can get really nice prints at home - and have the bonus of cleaning stuff up in Photoshop first if you like