Directionally challenged & GPS in France/Italy
 

I seem to always get lost. I always find my way home, but all my life my best friend reads the map and I drive. (we're a very good team actually.) I'm no better in neighborhoods on foot. She's not coming this trip & I'm the leader. (if you only knew how funny this is.)

I have a cell phone with navigation and it's been great. It's very convenient to type in an address and follow that arrow! That started me thinking,,,,is there some kind of gps I could get for our trip? No driving is involved - but It would be great to find our way back to hotels, etc. with no problems.

I was considering purchasing a unlocked phoned and buying a sim card there instead of paying the $1.29 a minute my carrier wants. Now I wonder, can I combine the two? Does anyone have any experience with a personal GPS?

Any advice?

I have a GPS and I would like to send it back to Garmin for an education.
It just about drives me nuts with its messages that take me off the correct route, babbles on about Lost Satellite Reception, Recalculating, and then giving me nut burger directions.

After seeing what that thing does in territory I know, I am concerned that it would get me turned upside down in Europe.

Just give me a good map. I found my way out of Munich last summer with a good map, and did not get lost driving to Interlaken despite a couple of tricky interfaces where the driving directions were less than perfect.

Bob,
Is it possible it's not working correctly? We've bought 3 garmins (2 dd's and my dad) and they all work great. BUT,dd's wasn't working correctly after about 2 months. We took it back to the store and they agreed and exchanged it. It kept losing reception, signal, etc.

My favorite was the day it told us we were so many feet from our destination, countdown, ta-da! You're there! Only problem was we were at a stop light at a complete stop the whole time!

But when they work correctly, they can be pretty nice.

Morgiesmom,

If there are already GPS units in the
family simply borrow one! I was on the
Garmin site the other day and they sell maps for Europe you'd need to get.

I have gps on a small laptop but it usually stays in the trunk... paper
maps still get me where I need to go.

Rob

DUH! I feel so stupid! But I always associate the ones we have with the car. I really don't know how long the battery would last. It obviously never occured to me that I could take that. But, carrying it around risks being broken. I guess I was hoping for something more like a watch.
hmmmm.
thanks.

It may not be working correctly. I checked for more recent updates, and there were none listed.

The darn thing seems to work ok.
I have been testing it driving between my house in Athens and my son's house north of Atlanta in Cobb County.

The darn thing goes bananas if I deviate from the route it things I need. I deviate because I know better from experience. Then I get all these cockamamie directions that take me places that are absurd.

Sunday we drove home from Waynesville N. C. It it was mostly ok on that drive, even it it did have a few problems following US 441 south!!

Let's put it this way. I don't trust it. Just give me a good map.
I have found my way all over London, Paris, Vienna and Munich with a good street map. We have driven around Germany, Switzerland and Austria with good road maps.

The thing I don't like about them is that the maps are not large enough to be comprehensive. Because I don't trust it based on evidence to date, I'll be darned if I will accept willy nilly what that blathering voice has to say.

I want to know where I am going, how I am going to get there before I leave, and not have to rely on this contraption to tell me where to go.

Sorry to be the voice that sounds contrary, but so far that device has not won my confidence. My wife and I both find it to be funny, and at times helpful. The problem is that in strange territory I don't know what is helpful and what is funny.

Friday in Waynesville NC we missed a tricky turn. The voice began the RECALCULATING spiel. We decided to see just where it would take us while trying to redirect us after our error. I could have turned around anytime and gone back to where we had been, but I decided to play out the string and go where it told us to go. Five miles later we were back where we started. This time we got the tricky turn right.

I guess at the price of gas, I should have turned around immediately, but I was still curious about this babbling box and decided to see just what it would not do.