Garmin Nuvi Q's - Provence
 

My wife bought a Garmin Nuvi 670 GPS navigator with maps for Europe and we're planning on using this on a two week trip around Provence.

While trying to program in the hotels I ran into two problems and since I know there are people here who use the Nuvi perhaps you can help. No problems with the larger towns but ...

1) We're staying at Le Pontet near Avignon and when I enter 'le pontet' there are maybe a dozen different cities with this name, differentiated by the Dx code, which I assume is the District. Does anyone know which District Avignon is in? That is, do I select "le pontet D06" or D03 or ?

2) I can't get it to recognize two smaller towns, St-Remy and St-Paul-de-Vence. I've tried many different versions of spelling (St. vs Saint, etc) with correct accent marks and the '-' in and out but I'm starting to think the unit just doesn't map these towns. Anyone have any luck entering these villages, or have any suggestions? I can find the hotel in St-Remy easily enough (Hotel Les Ateliers de l'Image, near downtown), but not sure about the one in S-P-d-Vence.

Thanks for any help!

Bill

Hello, basically just topping this for you. But, I was playing around with my dvd for my Garmin GPS, and, at first, it seemed like there were some addresses that weren't found. Then I started finding out the exact longitue & latitude lines of the places and putting them in. Then, for some reason, once I tried the spelling of certain streets 20 different ways, i found them eventually.

I got this figured out, more or less. In case anyone stumbles across this thread later here are a couple of tips ...

1) When I entered what looks (to an American) like the ZIP code for an address I get the right area, for example the right 'le pontet' with '84130'. This also worked for the smaller villages like St-Remy.

2) Still could not get it to accept the precise addresses the way they are given on our vouchers so I left off things like Boulevard or Avenue and just typed in the main name and this got me closer. For example in Le Pontet the address was given as 'Ave Charles de Gaulle' and the Nuvi wouldn't take this (or 'Avenue') but just entering 'Charles de Gaulle' gave me a couple of street options and I was able to select the right one.

In St-Remy I could only get the street entered, no addresses (again, by omitting the 'Blvd'). This should be enough since it's a small village. In St-Paul-de-Vence the hotel is on a rural road about half a mile out of town and the Nuvi finally recognized the road name after I gave it the ZIP code and gave me a list of 3 addresses (none correct for our lodge) so I picked the one that seems closest. Should be no problem finding the hotel from there.

So I guess it's easy to program for mid-sized and large cities but for these smaller towns and tiny villages you have to try different ways of entering the codes, in my case by starting with the postal code and then giving the main street name sans 'blvd' or 'ave' or whatever.

Bill

Thanks for the tips, Bill. Most useful for our upcoming trip.

I love my Nuvi too, but what drives me nuts with the Garmin computer software is the fact that you have to type in the country based on that country's name for itself. I could figure out "Deutschland" for Germany and "Nederland" for Holland/Netherlands but "CHE" for Switzerland? And where the heck is "Ellada"? (Now I know, it's Greece).

I just think they could've made things a little easier for tourists who don't speak the local lingo. How much more stored memory would it take to list the countries the way they are spelled in various other languages?

Just like the other posters mentioned, trying to find a street can be pretty frustrating if you don't type it EXACTLY the same way they've programmed it.

All this is easier than reading a map?? :)

StCirq, it's just that you don't have to be constantly looking at your map and road signs and you can actually enjoy the ride. The Garmin Nuvi 670 GPS we used in Canada was wonderful! You can pretty much just relax and let it guide you to your destination. It certainly takes a lot of the stress out of trying to navigate ONLY with a map.

<b>All this is easier than reading a map??</b>

Much easier ... at least once you get the %$#@ing waypoints programmed in :)