I am the navigator, I love paper maps.

Husband has bought Garmin NUVI 350, 370 loaded with Europe maps with city navigator, just arrived. Our departure in 2 weeks.

I would like the Michelin Italy atlas, do I need it? Or do I need any street maps for Venice, Florence or Rome that I can't--well, really haven't--already downloaded from Google?

I find it helpful to have a paper map where you can see the bigger picture. There can be more than one way to get from a to b, so I like to have a route in mind and know the names of towns along the way or detours to take if something interesting is nearby.

Sure, you should always have a back up just in case. We loved our Garmin Nuvi and it worked great for our last European trip but I'd never travel without some kind of map.

Nuvi is very useful and very fun but we would have gone astray without our paper maps on our last trip to Sardinia and Corsica!Nuvi was telling us to pull into driveways and parking lots... I also know that Nuvi is sometimes problematic in big cities with tall buildings...it makes her confused or so a London cab driver told us...
Have a wonderful trip!
Lisa

Our Nuvi 370 was useful for Rome, mostly useless for Venice and so-so for Paris. Paper maps saved the day. It works best on broad avenues where it can get a good signal and mostly does not work in narrow alley like streets. It will take you on what it calculates as the shortest route which is not always the best route or most interesting.

Thank you all for the input and experiences. I believe I will get the paper maps as well.

YES! Our Garmin quit working while we were driving from Arles to Nice and we had to navigate on our own. It wasn't hard on the highways - the signs are clearly marked, but once we arrived in Nice, we had quite a time finding the car rental drop-off site without a map! Also, when we were in Germany, we wanted to drive on the "Romantic Road" to Rothenburg, but the Garmin kept directing us to the quickest route - the highway. I would absolutely bring along paper maps.

Have a wonderful trip!!
A

Use your Garmin as much as possible here in the States before u go ..to get familiar with it. We had great success everywhere in Europe...except within Venice.

We also bought a Garmin 350 last year and added the european card before our trip to Italy and Germany. As much as we like paper maps, we really did not use them. We took a few with us.

What really helped was that my hubby, who is supremely patient, inputted the addresses of our hotels and parking garages that we would use during our trip. He also loaded a few restaurnts that we had heard about and wanted to try.

For Rome, the drivers are terrible and no rules of the road are respected. I would plan not to drive there but maybe you are more crazy than us!!!

I have a mini road atlas of Italy that is a bit like using a gps, in that the size of each page is only about 4x5". All well and good and handy and pocket-sized, but sometimes don't you want to lay the big map on the table or bad and look at the whole route? Then you notice that "just over there" is a place you remember hearing about, or that another place you had in mind is really not close at all. And ultimately that big map gives you a nice sense of where you've been.
It's not one or the other for me.

As to driving in the city centers, no, it's not much advised, not least of which because there are many areas with restricted parking and even restricted access by license plate number. In my experience Italian drivers are quick, but attentive. They need to be!

I saw a guy with a GPS in Venice. He was lost, and asking for directions. You need a paper map for Venice – a GPS will drive you nuts.

A <I>good</i> GPS shouldn't drive anyone nuts. But there are a lot of <I>bad</i> ones out there, so sometimes it's hard.

I was driving to the airport outside Milan and the highway exit that Garmin directed me onto was ripped up and closed, so I bypassed it, and Garmin's attempts to turn me around were almost comie. I had to stop at an AutoGrill to buy a map of Lombardy when I disocvered my general map of Italy just wasn't good enough.

Anyway, since maps are just about the lightest thing you can pack, I cannot imagine why you wouldn't take ones for where you are going. GPS's are one of the few items that provoke car break-ins in Italy. They are very popular with thieves, so keep yours out of sight when you're not using it.