We drove from Perpignan in the south of France to Paris last fall, with a couple of days each spent roaming around Provence and Burgundy. Bought a European chip on eBay for our Navigon (about $40, most of western Europe) and it worked flawlessly. Best part is we can use it again and again.

It's worth the time to program in your destinations - that allows you to be much more adventurous.

I'd be wary of hidden charges with the rental companies, especially if you are renting one-way.

We traveled to northern Italy last fall with a <b>Garmin Nuvi 770</b> and a <b>Michelin Italy Tourist & Motoring Atlas</b>. The 770 included maps of N. America & Europe.

While we found the GPS helpful getting us from point A to B, we learned that it does have its limitations. For example, when we drove to the hilltown of San Gimignano, it kept directing us to <i>turn right</i> onto a street which was obviously on the other side of the ancient wall! In this case, we relied on the road signs & a map to get us to our destination!

If you do buy a GPS, I suggest that you use it at home before you leave on your trip. It takes a bit of practice to listen/follow oral directions & to view the map on the screen as you are driving! Hopefully, you will have a navigator who will help out!

Good luck!

2010: We've been using our Michelin Italy Tourist and Motoring Atlas for about 10 years. I asked DH if he wanted to get a GPS for our trip to Italy next month, and he said we'd done OK with our atlas for all these years, why switch now?

tuscanlifeedit: Yes, I know what you mean. Our travels throughout France have been guided by Michelin maps. When we went off-course, it was an opportunity for discovery ... after all, how lost could we get???

But I must say that there were some instances we were glad to have the GPS on this (our first) trip to Italy. I'm thinking of the time we drove into Florence to drop off our rental car. We are certain that we couldn't have navigated the maze of narrow streets & across a bridge to the Avis office without the GPS! Later, we looked at our map & we still had no clue of the route we took to arrive at our destination!!!

I guess what I am trying to say to Racer 042 is not to rely solely on a GPS. Take a good map as well!

I currently have a Garmin Nuvi 350 and an iphone with GPS. I used the iphone extensively in France, Italy and London. The tube and metro apps were excellent! I preprogrammed all our apartments, restaurants, and museums into the phone and we seldom got lost, except when we wanted to. Then when we wanted to get somewhere, I would pull out the iphone and maps app and find out where we were.

This will be the first time we have driven in Europe (in the last 20 years), and I want to use a GPS. I don't really like using my iphone as a GPS for driving, I like a separate GPS unit. I understand the limitations. I keep reading of people in Germany who follow a GPS right into a river or Oregon in winter people keep following their GPS onto a logging road 3 ft high in snow.

I like using a paper map to make plans, but then use the GPS. It saves arguments (DW is really good at reading maps and announcing that we should have turned right at the last intersection).

Jill and RS899, if you see a yellow BMW C1 on Lake Mary Blvd, that's me.

Racer 042

bookmarking

I have been playing with this old $12 Magellan Roadmate and I think it's going to work for our purposes. I don't expect it to have many good current POIs and I wouldn't want to use it on the outskirts of a city, but it ought to do for bombing around Tuscany and Umbria. Still going to have good maps just in case...

Racer - I won't see you in Lake Mary unless I am eating at Amura. I live all the way in Windermere. Nice car though!

Do you guys still think a GPS is needed even if you don't have a car?

Jill,

I used my GPS in both driving and pedestrian modes. Worked great for locating sites while walking.

I bid on a Garmin Nuvi 670 which comes with maps of NA and Europe on ebay from the Ontario Police auction and won it for $82.00 US including shipping! It doesn't come with the power cord, but I can use the one I currently have for my Garmin Nuvi 350. The 670's commonly go for over $200, so I thrilled with the find and look forward to using it this fall in Tuscany.

Nice to see so many folks with Nuvi 350's. I paid $650 for mine three and a half years ago. Spent another $200 over the years on updates, language translation software and a beanbag mount for European travel and still feel it is worth every cent. Like EmilyC's husband I pre-plan our entire itinerary (with lots of optionals) using Mapsource on my computer, then uploading it into the Garmin. Over the years I've logged more than 10,000 miles using the 350 over in Europe.

I just sold my Nuvi on E-Bay for $120 and have ordered the Nuvi 775T which includes North American and European maps plus traffic reports. As I've gotten older I find I need the bigger display screen.

And for those of you that wonder why I update my maps every year or two, just this past Christmas while driving in Scotland I was using the 2008 version of European maps. Upon leaving Edinburgh airport I found myself driving on a brand new highway that my Nuvi thought was just a cow pasture. No roads shown anywhere on the GPS screen! A big question park was displayed over my car pictogram. Also, in Stirling I was directed the wrong way up a one way street. Apparently the direction had changed in the past year.

We also have used a Garmin 350 for many years. Our route from home to I 95 is through Lake Mary Blvd to Highway 46, right by the Sanford Orlando airports. Monique (the name for our Garmin) gets very annoyed, as she thinks we are driving through a cow pasture.