Using GPS in Tuscany
 

I will be staying in San Gimignano with a rental car for 4 days, and wanted to visit SIena, Florence, Cortona, etc.

I would like to pre-program my GPS with routes, but what should I put as the destination for each of these towns? I don't have any addresses, and would like to be directed to parking sites.

Any suggestions?

THanks!

Well, the Italian word is "Parcheggio" or something very like it, and as you approach each city you see lots of signs for various spots where you can do it. Mayb you can google.

In Siena and San Gimignano, you have to park outside the city/town, and we did park outside the city in Florence, which has, as you have no doubt read here, strong rules against non-residents bringing cars into much of the city. Since most people don't recognize those zones, many of them wind up getting traffic tickets which cost a lot, though the rental car company is happy to charge them or at least their own fees to your credit card. Because my GPS often leads me into places I wouldn't ordinarily go here in the US (sketchy neighborhoods, mostly) I would be skeptical about its guiding me by a legal route to parking within city walls.

Haven't been to Cortona.

For Florence I'd park in Poggibonsi and take a bus into Florence. For the reasons Ackislander gave.

Maybe look at online mapping sites like www.viamichelin.com, find the location of parking lots close to your interests, then program the location into the GPS.

We used our GPS (Garmin Nuvi)pedestrian mode for Siena and it was useless. It worked somewhat better in Florence but was not perfect - didn't need it in SanG.

For small towns (smaller than Siena, actually), we put in the center of the city. On the way to that point, we invariably see parking lots.

Or, if I'm concerned about finding parking, before we leave for vacation, I'll use google maps to try to locate specific parking lots, and then head for those.

Use " Google maps" to get your routing and parking.
BTW, a drive to Cortona will be more than 4 hours RT.

I have a couple of TomToms but Garmin must have some kind of route planning software you use on a computer then transfer to GPS? Google TYRE... a 3rd party program... TomTom supports it.

There are also thousands of POIs I can download from TomTom. Go online and see what you find for]the brand you have.

Another options (w/ a few more steps) is to use Google Earth to actually find where you want to park. Then through GE get the coordinates of that spot and then enter it manually into your GPS. We did this for our trip to Yellowstone and it worked great. We found off the beaten path parking lots, overlooks and places that looked interesting and marked them. Obviously you don't want to enter a bunch of places though.