Thanks for sharing your entertaining adventures. I'm glad it wasn't your bag that was blown up at CDG! ;^)

Our last flight home from Paris was held up for over an hour as someone's luggage was aboard but the person was not. ;^(

Hi, Kansas! Thanks for sharing that nice dinner with us in Sarlat, and thanks for the trip report. We liked <i>Le Présidial</i> so much we made reservations there and returned the night of <i>"Les jours du patrimoine"</i>, when Sarlat was lit by thousands of candles.

Margie and I have been back from France for over two weeks now, and I haven't gotten to my trip report yet. But it IS coming - I've started getting my notes together.

I'm also going to post on the Forum, separately, some thoughts about using a Garmin GPS in Europe. Our experiences were much like yours - our GPS seemed to prefer to take us off onto very small roads.

I have a "blog" that I add to every week. It's not topical, but rather is more like a set of memoirs. It's only a blog in the sense that I post an entry weekly, and it's on the web. This Thursday evening's entry, to be called "Recalculating!", will be about the use of a GPS, and touches upon its use in Europe.

By the way, in case any of your readers are curious, the stories about the parrot "Harold" that we told you at dinner in Sarlat can be found on my blog at:

http://ljkrakauer.com/LJK/70s/harold.htm

Taconictraveler, did your DH really get Lyme Disease in France, or did I misunderstand? I didn't think it existed there (it certainly exists here in Massachusetts).

- Larry

I need to read all this more carefully but really good report with lots of suugestions. Thanks!

funny, your Garmin must be related to our Tomtom.

there was a perfectly good motorway that it could have taken us on to get from Berlin to Potsdam [as i only realised much later] but it wanted to take us across country not just on small roads, but on roads that didn't actually go anywhere. one classic moment - as we were driving in the dark down the tiniest lane it told us to turn round, and when we'd turned round it told us to turn round again.....we just kept going till we found our way back to civilisation and followed the signs - much easier.

Hi Larry and Margie,

Peter just read the "Harold" blog and was laughing just as hard as he was when you told the story. I will never forget the moment when you squawked like a parrot, Larry! What a fun evening we had.

I look forward to your "Recalculating" blog. With our Garmin, we also had a lot of "No Matches Found" that was annoying to say the least. And, I know that I spelled the names of the towns correctly. Each time we left Sarlat for the day, our Garmin would spend quite a long time "Acquiring Satellite". I believe it often took about 10 minutes until the Garmin was up and working. We usually had our friends in their car right behind us. It truly was a case of the blind following the blind.

Annhig, I am surprised that your Tomtom also liked to lead you astray. I have read so often that the Tomtoms are superior to the Garmins in Europe. Thank heavens we knew enough to have good old paper maps, right? We will laugh about the narrow lane that lead to the "maintenace road" for a long, long time!

On acquiring the satelites: How old is your Garmin? I had a Garmin Nuvi 650, four years old, and it took a long time (in the US) to acquire satellites. Just before our September trip, I bought a new Nuvi 1370T, and it seems to acquire the satellites much faster (and it doesn't even have a flip-up antenna, like the older one).

I have a bit more to say about the "no matches found" in my upcoming blog entry this Thursday evening.

can't wait to hear the "recalculating" stories.
we just got home from France, where our GPS (came with auto rental) operated in many of same ways complained of above! I too finally gave up - checked Google Maps or via Michelin on my iPad before traveling, and used my notes, my paper maps, and my nose to get where we wanted to go. Lots of narrow, as the crow flies, roads on the GPS!!

Justretired: No, DH had obviously been bitten by a tick right here at home in the Hudson Valley! then it took two weeks into our France trip until the Lyme disease broke out with a vengeance!

Annhig, I am surprised that your Tomtom also liked to lead you astray. I have read so often that the Tomtoms are superior to the Garmins in Europe. Thank heavens we knew enough to have good old paper maps, right? We will laugh about the narrow lane that lead to the "maintenace road" for a long, long time!>>

to be fair, the oral information and the screen lay-out are a lot better than the first one we had - a garmin. we get told the road no, shown junction layouts - that's very good. but the road FINDING, which is after all its main function, leaves quite a lot to be desired. the route it found from Berlin Schönefeld to Potsdam was just daft.

as you say, lucky we'd got a nice old-fashioned MAP.

I've just posted my Thursday blog entry about our Garmin GPS. It's called "Recalculating!", and it can be found at:

http://ljkrakauer.com/LJK/00s/recalculating.htm

It actually has a picture of "American Jill" - take a look.

I thought annhig's story about a GPS repeatedly advising U-turns was hysterically funny. I guess if it doesn't know what to do with you, it has you spin in circles.

Many years ago, when GPS units were new, someone told of a calculated route to a spot in Boston that took the user out of Boston through the Callahan tunnel, then made a U-turn, and came back to almost the same spot through the Sumner tunnel (these names actually refer to the opposite directions of the SAME tunnel - Boston never wastes a naming opportunity).

In the blog entry, I note that I've found it best to enter only the basic part of a street name. In France, I entered just "KENNEDY" to have my GPS find what turned out to be called "AVENUE DU PRESIDENT JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY". But that leaves me mystified as to why "PECH MERLE" didn't match the full name "GROTTE DU PECH MERLE". Any chance there was a hyphen in there, "PECH-MERLE"? Hyphens can be entered on the Garmin keyboard by selecting a key labeled &?%

It would be nice if Garmin gave us a manual with more information about their matching algorithm, but no such luck.

By the way, there are some thoughts on our encounters with the French on our Dordogne trip in another blog entry:

http://ljkrakauer.com/LJK/00s/thefrench.htm

But I haven't gotten our trip report up yet! Sorry.

- Larry

We are looking forward to your trip report, Larry. Pete and I both enjoyed your blog. What a wonderful gift you are giving your children, grandchildren, and future generations.

The "Costco Effect" made me laugh. At our neighborhood grocery store, we have quite a different scenario right now. There is a sale on mums. Buy one for $3.33 or three for $10.00. Every time I walk by, I shake my head and cannot believe the sign is still up. I feel like buying three of them just so I can tell the cashier to ring them up separately!

There is a sale on mums. Buy one for $3.33 or three for $10.00. >>

"mums"?

dare I ask what they are?

Kansas,

Just got back to finishing reading your report. Great job and loved your pictures. It certainly brought back many fond memories from our trip there in June. We are already thinking about next year's trip to France.

I sure am sorry to hear about your mishaps. Those things can sometimes ruin a wonderful vacation but glad to hear they didn't hamper your enjoyment of your time there.

I found it particularly funny reading about your Nigel directions. We also had brought our Garmin with us and also had a GPS with the car. Both of them were wrong many times and we were also glad to have our paper maps. We eventually turned off the Garmin and used just the car GPS because we were getting conflicting information and suffering from TMI.

annhig, "mums" is a standard American contraction of chrysanthemums. Like kansas, I would have assumed the word to have been also used in the UK, but I guess not.

- Larry

justretired: That is a very very good discussion of "Recalculating" -- and it pretty much matches our recent experiences with a garmin nuvi in France.

I must say, though, that we did get to see some very lovely NARROW quiet scenic roads!! Sometimes that was a plus! Sometimes it was positively maddening!

I just posted a separate thread on Fodor's with the material from my "Recalculating!" blog entry, to make it more widely available for people who haven't gotten to it from <i>this</i> thread. If you've already read "Recalculating!", don't bother with the Fodor's version - the Fodor's material is a subset of the blog entry. If you do want to look at it, it's at:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-in-europe.cfm

I'm also well on the way to polishing up my notes on our Dordogne trip, and should have a trip report up soon (I hope).

<font color="#0066CC"><b>taconictraveler</b></font>, your statement that "we did get to see some very lovely NARROW quiet scenic roads!!" made me think about the effect of the GPS from the other point of view - the people who live along those roads. As a result of all the people following GPS guidance, they must suddenly have all sorts of traffic coming down their previously empty roads. Before the GPS, the only people who drove there must have been the locals, and the occasional outsider who was hopelessly lost. Now, all of a sudden, all kinds of people can use their roads.

I wonder if they'll fight back by having the roads removed from the maps.

- Larry

Hmmm. - Never thought of that.....

Re: trip report: me too. Trying to get all notes in one place to remind me of all I want to say.

OMG! They detonated the bag? With folks still in the airport? Astounding. Glad there wasn't a BIG bomb in it.

annhig, "mums" is a standard American contraction of chrysanthemums. Like kansas, I would have assumed the word to have been also used in the UK, but I guess not.>

ah, that makes sense - i think that growers call them that.

us amateurs call them 'chrysants".

Our first trip to Europe by ourselves (not with my parents) we had the same situation with security blowing up a bag in CDG. I didn't think it at the time but my mother commented that had it been a bomb it would have blown out the whole terminal. It was funny they put it in a metal box and detonated it and then poured the contents on the ground and left. It looked like it had been a canvas LL Bean type of briefcase with lots of papers. Hope it wasn't irreplaceable contracts!
Great trip report. Glad that even with the travails you enjoyed it.

Very enjoyable report. =D> Between you, justretired, and other posters I have gotten some good suggestions for the Sarlat area.

We just returned from France, but only did Paris this year. Usually we have some time in Paris and then take the TGV to another location for a week or 2. This is an area we have not explored as of yet, but the reports and photos of the Fodorites make us want to go there.