When you come across a wi-fi access point that wants to charge you money, you can get free access by going through the DNS servers as described in this article http://www.dnstunnel.de/. The access you get is slow, and it's a bit of a pain to set up. But I downloaded the explanation from this page onto my computer so that if I'm ever in an emergency where I need access and can't (or really don't want to) pay for it, I have an option.