GPS in Italy (Tuscany) - worth it?
 

We are renting a car for 6 days in Tuscany and have never been. Is it worth it to get a GPS added to our rental car? We've never used one... are they easy to use, especially being in a foreign country? Thanks!

Why would you need one? Are you really bad at reading road maps? Getting lost in the Tuscan countryside isn't the worst thing in the world. And if you do get lost, it's a neat experience to stop and ask locals for directions in your fractured Italian (assuming yours is as bad as mine).

Actually, I'm pretty adept at reading road maps. I just wasn't sure if road signs are easy to read or find... we've never been to Tuscany. But I do like the idea of getting lost!

Oh, I wouldn't worry about a GPS then. I had never driven there either and I found the road system easy to navigate. Of course, I'm talking about driving in the country, not in a zoo like Rome.

My experience in Tuscany was that *signage*, if I may use that awful coinage, was quite good.

Not quite as good as France, where the well-known passion for classification and standardization reaches its apogee in the road signs.

But way, way better than at home - in my native Canada, where the paucity of signs (many of them useless anyway) suggests southern Britain in 1940, when all the road signs were torn up to confuse the anticipated invaders.

It is FUN to use maps traveling Tuscany. I think GPS would be a travesty! The one thing you need to remember about road signs in Italy is that if there is a sign with an arrow to the left that says "Volterra" it does not necessarily mean turn left to get to Volterra, it means you are here on this road that goes to Volterra. Once we got the hang of that, we never got lost.

A good map will suffice. I bought the Michelin 1:400,000 and it did not have the detail I needed, especially for the back roads.

The TCI (Touring Club Italiano) Map Toscana 1:200,000 was much better. ((b))

Sometimes getting lost is fun, other times it is really annoying, we've had GPS from Hertz many times in many places in Europe, very nice because if you see someplace you want to explore off your route, it will redirect you as needed, and at the end of a long day of fun, it is very nice to be directed to the door of your hotel, I see both points, either works.