Am I crazy to bring my GPS Garmin to walk around or just use a paper map?
 

Walking
Around
Rome
Can
Be
WILD!
And how about ATHENS? OY!!

Especially if you don't have a clue as to where to go... which can fun, but if you gotta squeeze in a few days into a day, how about bringing my European loaded GPS Garmin. (I don't have it yet, but my research suggested it would work as a pedestrian... no??)

Your thoughts or if you have the best map suggestion, I'll do what you say. After all, I'm just an American in search of an adventure.

GRAZIE!

We walked around Boston with our Tomtom and it was great. You might want an old fashioned compass on hand as well because sometimes we would head off in a direction only to find out it wasn't the direction we thought. It can't change the map unless you are moving.

But while in Pedestrian mode it did cut us through courtyards and such that cars couldn't go through, so the pedestrian mode is much more than just the car mode slowed down. And having the distance and time of arrival was very helpful too. I just sort of held it casually in front of me and checked it now and again. Less touristy than a giant map. Just make sure the battery will hold out for awhile if not attached to a car. Plus the preloaded points of interest are kind of like having a yellow pages with you.

I used my satnav in Rome, Florence, Sienna & Pisa. It is a useful aid to check where you are, how close to where you want to go & show taxi drivers where you want them to take you.
One drawback was that mine showed the driving route rather than the pedestrian route. After the 10 days the battery started to run low so needed to use with care.
For Rome I had copied the bus route map, enlarging the sections of where I was staying & also sections of areas of interest. This helped find the bus numbers to get around. The actualo bus map was too small for me to read.

I have never used GPS so it is hard for me to compare. We did fine in Rome with conventional maps. OUr guidebook (Eyewitness Travel Rome guide) had a maps section with a lot of detail and we also picked up two free tourist maps, one from the tourist office, another better one (because it had an index!) widely available at many tourist sites (welcome Roma map) A lot of people swear by the streetwise maps because they are laminated and fold easily

I continue to be somewhat skeptical of GPS because people visiting our rural home with GPS in their cars are consistently sent the wrong way (over a class four road) to our house. I definitely think you would want a system geared to pedestrians rather than drivers

I'd say bring it along. I used ours in Paris and getting off the train at Gare de Nord, it proved valuable in getting our cab driver on the straight-and-narrow. Our hotel was relatively close by the station and when the drive took longer than I expected, I plugged in the hotel's address and when the turn-by-turn driving instructions from my Garmin PDA started matching those from his TomTom, suddenly the route started becoming somewhat more direct.

As far as walking, the iQue I had at the time wasn't particularly well-suited but apparently the nuvi series (700 and newer) are somewhat more sensitive and better able to deal with the comparatively narrow streets of European cities. That and nuvis do have a pedestrian mode which I find works quite well as far as routing goes. The other side benefit is that you can use Google Earth which accesses the track function on a Garmin and let's you see where you've wandered.

Geeky but I like it. :D

HTH
K

Just an addendum: Robespierre is the GPS guru. His advice is worth its weight in gold.

We used a Garmin Nuvi loaded with maps of Italy in May. The pedestrian function worked fine in Rome, Siena, Florence & Venice, though we also had paper maps. We found the gps to be very helpful to find our way back to our hotel or car (Siena).

Make sure if you decide to take the GPS that you also have a decent paper map. I recently read a trip report from Rome where the GPS didn't work and the person was completely lost.

Also, sometimes it is fun to get lost and find new things along your way. Make sure to spend some time looking up and around you instead of just at the GPS - you want to see all the beautiful buildings around you!

I definitely agree with making sure it's not in car mode....and then again, as an old fashioned, map-reading, monument memorizing girl, I'm skeptical of GPS because I've almost never seen a car go the right way when following one.

For Knickerbocker- my DH ears perked up when I read him this part of your post, <<he other side benefit is that you can use Google Earth which accesses the track function on a Garmin and let's you see where you've wandered.>>

We don't know how to access Google Earth on our Garmin. How is that done?
Thanks, Evelyn

Efoss3,

Just a clarification. I didn't mean that your nuvi would access Google Earth but rather after your trip is over, wherever you happened to have wandered with the GPS turned on, it will record a track file which Google Earth can import under the Tools menu. Depending on the speed of your machine, it may take a bit of time to transfer but it is interesting to see. It can also be vexing if it turns out you were spitting distance from something really interesting that you didn't know about. I also found it interesting to have mine in the window of the plane and be able to track just where we happened to be over the East Coast of Canada, the Atlantic, etc.

HTH
K

I dislike using GPS while driving in Italy, but I was happy to borrow one from another couple when I got lost in Venice and was in danger of missing my train. It worked.

I suspect the idea of GPS navigating will be commonplace in a few short years, just as cell phones are today. That said, I think I will investigate the cost of purchasing a Garmin and see how it pans out in Europe.

BUT, I wonder how it will work in Athens... or even Naples, Istanbul...

HA! So, can you imagine an American tourist in Istanbul looking at his GARMIN, while onlookers smoking their hookahs just shake their head!

Thanks for all the tips, and ideas friends.

What do you have against getting lost?? I've sometimes found my best stuff like that!

If you don't mind my saying so, your ideas that Napoli is somehow how less-GPS accessible than most towns in New Jersey -- or that Turks smoke hookahs and are mystfied by new-fangled gadgets -- is not quite in step with reality.

Athens suffered extensive war damage and most of its streets resemble the grids of American cities. You really have to march and hunt to find a pre-war cityscape of tangled streets and alleys.

When I moved to Italy, it was Italians who encouraged me to buy a GPS -- and me who doesn't like using them.

There is a recent thread about using Pedestrian mode on GPS, and basingstoke2 wrote a very thorough and thoughtful comment:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...omment-5872935

Copied and pasted:
<i>basingstoke2 on Aug 14, 09 at 11:22 AM
Pedestrian Garmin - a bone of contention between myself and DW. She loves it, me, not so much, I for the most part find it a pain. However to be fair:

1. We have found that the battery life (Nuvi 370) was about 3-4 hours. Of course, it it not on constantly.

2. When beginning a route, it is often difficult to find the starting point. A small pocket compass is useful.

3. It does not work well in narrow streets or streets with tall buildings. Thus it is better in some cities and towns than in others. For example, in Venice and parts of the left bank of Paris, it was mostly useless.

4. The screen washes out in the sun.

5. It most often does not choose the most interesting or pleasant route. However, I understand that there is software that Garmin sells that will allow you to pick a route in advance and then the GPS will guide you on the chosen route. That would have been good to have on our last trip.

6. There are places that it just cannot find. It had us wandering around a lot in Amsterdam and also was unable to find some addresses in Paris.

7. A plus is that you can plug in an ear bud to hear the spoken directions. Useful in calling less attention to yourself and using in noisy places, like a busy street.

8. What I don't like is that it requires attention that disracts from the purpose of touring, that is seeing things and enjoying the ambiance of where you are.

9. And as CarolA says, often getting lost is the best part of the trip, particularly in places like Venice.

In any case, you will still want a good paper map as a supplement.</i>

yk,

That particular post is not exactly helpful as the technology of their particular unit is fairly dated. I have 2 nuvi 750s (2 generations newer than the 370) and even that is 2 year old technology which has been supplanted by newer. Even between the 750s, the older one's chipset is the less sensitive but more sensitive than the 370 that basingstoke2 was citing. Anyway, I'll address the post point by point.

1. I've found my 750s last about 3-4 hours in constant-on usage. If I'm not needing to constantly refer to the screen, the 750 (and newer units, I'm sure) has a screen-off mode that somewhat reduces the battery drain.

2. Depending on your proximity to a route's start point, the nuvi will either tell you to walk/drive (depending on the mode you're in) to highlighted route or offer to navigate you there. I can't see how the compass would make the difference in finding or not finding the start point.

3. The 370 in terms of ability to locate itself in close-quarters streets as you'd find in Paris or Venice is about as good as my iQueM4 (which is to say, not very). However, we're talking old technology which has been supplanted in the interim. Newer units don't seem to have that issue.

4. Current screens in my experience don't have that issue.

5. nuvis will offer you the shortest or the fastest routing. What is interesting or pleasant to one person may not be so to another. That said, if you know where you want to go, nuvis newer than the 600-series will allow you to create and program your own route.

6. I can't address this beyond suggesting that the mapset on their unit may have not been current. My experience in finding addresses was usually good so I don't know what happened for basingstoke2.

7. Definitely

8. You can mute the audio

9. Definitely. You can always ignore the GPS/turn it off.

My personal experience is only with Garmin. I would expect that my comments are likely equally applicable to other makes of GPS.

HTH
K

I like paper maps because you can easily scribble and make notes on them.

I find a combination of both paper and GPS works best. Paper maps for planning where you will go and GPS for telling you where you are and where you have just been. Everybody here seems to be referring to GPS set designed primarily for cars - don't forget that there are handheld sets designed for walkers. Their batteries will last for 12 hours plus.

Improved reception is due to better antenna design and sensitivity. I'm very amused by the suggestions that GPS won't work in Europe - how do you think the aircraft got you to Athens or Naples in the first place? The satellite pattern gives worldwide coverage.

<<I continue to be somewhat skeptical of GPS because people visiting our rural home with GPS in their cars are consistently sent the wrong way (over a class four road) to our house. >>

The quality of maps/directions depends entirely on what is provided by YOUR municipality to Navteq.