We drove around Northern IReland and Ireland without a GPS - we had a map and got along fine. Sometimes the GPS can cause more problems than they help.

I would make sure and buy an Ordinance map once you get to Ireland, they're available in book stores. They are updated annually. We drove the entire country and this map never let us down. We had a GPS too and, well just shut the damn thing off after awhile. The Irish are always happy to help with directions. And...any tourist information office will always give you solid directions to your hotel on a local map even in large cities.

Whichever map you choose, make sure it is VERY detailed, and you should be fine. The only time I wished I had a GPS was driving in Cork and Ennis - cursed with many one-way streets and no signs.

I'm Irish and am constantly complaining about the lack of signs and have no idea how visitors ever manage to get anywhere. It drives me crazy when I try to visit attractions at the weekend. Personally I would say yes, get a GPS

Sorry, missed the fact that you are considering buying one. That sounds a bit mad. You can generally get a car with GPS from the rental company for an extra charge.

littlejane, I'm with you on the sign issue! I told my Irish friends that if I were in charge of tourism there, I'd put lots of sign-painters to work!

It's like they don't realize the economic benefits of people spending more money if they weren't driving around lost :)

I can never understand all the "don't get a GPS"
people. Why would you not want to have the best and most up to date help possible? Would they have said "Who needs these new fangled maps of Mercator's anyway?!" LOL

By all means have your husband buy one! It's a much better idea to know how to use one before hopping into a strange car with the controls on the wrong side! Plus there will be all kinds of updates and extra info that can be downloaded before you go.

And since you will likely be the designated navigator you should play with it before leaving as well. My wife is always intimidated by new technology but once she used our TomTom for a while she found out they are very easy to use.

And don't be put off by the Luddites who'll predict a GPS will send you over the Cliffs of Moher or some such nonsense... they act as if someone using paper maps never got lost! LOLOL

I love maps and have driven all over Europe without a problem over the years but after using
my TomTom for 2,000 KM in France 2 years ago I'd never go without it again.

Rob

If you plan to drive with GPS and want to stay at B&Bs outside of major towns, ask for their lat/lon GPS coordinates or take that info from their website.
Otherwise you will be stuck with an "address" that consists of just the name of the house/B&B, and the names of village and county - since road names and house numbers rarely exist outside of towns.

Yes, like Rose Cottage, Rathmore. Or White House, Killarney. Very frustrating to GPS :)

Hi Julies, In my opinion a GPS definately improves a driving holiday a lot, especially in Ireland, where roadsign can be lacking to say the least.

Since you quote a GPS price in $, I assume you are from the USA. Remember that - just in the off chance you already have a GPS, you can just go online and pay (less than 175) to get Euro maps for it.

We just returned Saturday from a lovely "windscreen" tour of Ireland. We used the Hertz map and driving directions I preprinted from theaa.com. I am a terrible map reader so I plugged in various itineraries on theaa.com, to cover lots of contingencies. Happily, this info proved to get us where we needed to go, with only a few minor detours.

Here's a hint I received for the roundabouts: the navigator can direct the driver to take the appropriate exit off the roundabout by stating it's "clock" position e.g. M-8 at 3 o'clock; N-4 at 9 o'clock. This piece of advice helped immensely!

Cowboy1968 - excellent tip. Just did that a few weeks ago to find a newly built winery.
(We're from the US) We bought our GPS about a year ago and have found it's very accurate, except for finding restaurants. It has led us to places out of business, a gas station, and someones house in the middle of a village. But it was fun! We used a GPS in 2005 in Germany and really liked it, but it's biggest use was to get us back to our zimmer after a day of sight seeing. We still enjoy getting lost and finding "undiscovered" places. I've ordered a Europe map on SD for our upcoming trip. 99 USD

I always bring a laptop (now netbook) for multiple reasons. Copying photos/videos, communications and GPS.

We have an old ProGin SG108 GPS antennae that magnetically attaches to the top of the car. This plugs into the USB port of the computer. During our last trip to Ireland (Summer 09), we used MS Autoroute 2007 as the software. I was at first concerned, because I had heard how bad the GPS maps of Ireland were supposed to be. It was dead on accurate, even showing the driveway up to the cottage we rented outside of Limerick.

Let's face it, many of the roads in Ireland are really small and not well marked. The GPS was a godsend, as we drive all over the place and never once got lost. It works out great because I use an inverter to keep the computer powered up and the DW just puts it down on the floor when we don't need it. Since it is plugged into a power supply, it is always running and takes only a few seconds to activate.

Can the self-contained units do the same, probably, but since I already have the computer, antennae and software, why spend more. Plus the screen is WAY bigger than any dashboard GPS and thus you can see it lots easier. In addition, the software allows us to do things that only the top of the line GPS systems can do.

HOWEVER, during the planning stages for a trip to Greece, the MS software was worthless. According to it, Greece only has about 6 roads. In Italy, it was excellent, as well as in the UK. Haven't tried it in other European countries. But it also works great in the US. My daughter used it extensively on a multi-city, 4 month theater tour last summer and loved it.

dave

dave

I started this. We did fine without a GPS, and there were only a couple times we would have wished for one. Several times we were on roads that were on the map but were totally unsigned and unnamed (both on the map and in reality). But, in these instances, there wren't all that many other options anyway so we didn't get lost.

Thanks for the update, julies. We have been to Ireland multiple times without GPS. Our Michelin map is very well-worn and now probably out of date. We have had many fun adventures with happy endings while being "lost" in Ireland.