Portable GPS in Italy
 

We will be house exchanging near Milan complete with automobile and wonder if there is a way or place to rent a portable English-speaking GPS to use in the car. Anyone out there know?
Thanks much!
Joyy

You can buy something like the Garmin Nuvi before you leave and simply get the European maps. If you are in the U.S., these can be had very inexpensively and work pretty well. The language is set with the device, so you can have anything from British English, to Australian or a host of other languages. I made up several of my own, mostly to tick off my wife who is a New Yorker. "Yo Moron, ya missed da toiwn. Now I gotta do sum math. Geez" :-)

Hi J,

From what I have seen from the car rental companies, you will probably find it cheaper to buy a GPS on eBay.

((I))

I would also recommend buying before you leave home. Then you'll be able to practice using the GPS in a familiar neighborhood, rather than muddling through on unfamiliar territory.

I was just doing a lot of research on this very topic just the past two weeks in prepartion for our coming trip to Italy. My findings lead me to agree with the others suggesting BUYING a GPS may be more cost effective depending on the length of time you would need the GPS for.

In our case, we would have had to rent the GPS for 2 weeks. I found the cost difference between renting a lesser model GPS for 2 weeks versus buying a brand new Garmin Nuvi 2450 (a superior model over what the rental would have been) plus the cost of the Italy maps was not enough to justify paying the cost of renting a unit you only get for 2 weeks. So we opted to pay an extra $50-$60 and OWN a brand new superior model Nuvi. It just didn't make sense to us to pay nearly $190 or so to rent for two weeks and have to return it when for around $50-$60 more we could PURCHASE an even better unit WITH the extra cost Italy maps. And we don't even NEED a GPS for at home since we already have an In Dash Navigation system in our personal car.

If you only need the GPS for say a week or so then it may make sense for you to rent, but even still, you could PURCHASE a less expensive GPS than the Garmin Nuvi 2450 example we chose and would probably still then find it is more cost effective for you to purchase instead of rent, even if you don't need a GPS back at home. Why pay around $125 (and possibly more) to rent something for a week and have to return it when for around $175 you could OWN a brand new higher end unit. But I suppose for some people, that $50 savings means more.

Best of luck with your choice. We purcahsed ours through Amazon btw.

Jim

Having a GPS before the trip allows you to enter destinations and routes at home. Google Maps also has "send" (find destination with balloons, which is the case for restaurants and attractions, then "more", then "send") to option to send the locations you found on google maps directly to GPS. I transfer destinations to my Garmin Nuvi this way using a USB cable and a Garmin plug-in I downloaded from their site. Be sure to sanity check the Google maps locations before loading onto your GPS.

If the destination does not have a natural balloon on Google maps, right click the location to create a green down arrow, left click the green down arrows "what's here", to create balloon on a fly.

Thank you all for the excellent information and help!!
Joyy