Bringing your own GPS to France

I have an older Garmin. I did this and it worked fine. For some reason it took a couple of hours to figure out it was in Europe (tried to navigate us to Provence from Boston, the last place we used it) but once it caught on, smooth sailing.

I did this a few years ago- bought the European maps to load onto my new Garmin Nuvi. It worked well in France for a 2-week trip mostly in the Loire region and also last fall in western Germany. Last year I supplemented with Google maps downloaded at the hotels where we had Wifi so we could then use them offline without those pricy data roaming charges. It was nice to have the two for comparison but probably not really necessary.

Yes, you do need to give it 10 minutes or so to find the satellites and get itself oriented the first time you use it in Europe.

We have taken our personal Garmin to Europe for the past 5 or 6 years. I am probably still married because of it. :) I bought a used chip off of Ebay for 49.00. It was 1 year old. The Garmin worked fine, once it figured out we were in Europe and to use the inserted card. We also take a good map of the region we are going to, so we can see where the GPS is probably taking us and to plan the next day or two excersions. I set ours to avoid tolls, and we drove through lovely French, Spanish and German countrysides. It took a bit longer, but saving a couple of hundred euro by not using the toll roads was worth it to us. We were there to see the country, not toll roads. I can see super highways in the US for a lot less money.

We take our Garmin with us every year with no problem. Last summer when we started to update our maps, we bought an inexpensive lifetime update package, it warned us that it might take 4+ hours. Don't wait until the last minute if you need to do this function.

I kind of like our familiar, portable Garmin because it will let the passenger program destinations while driving and a builtin GPS won't allow this.

EDIT: as others have said, you do need to look at a real map or on your phone or iPad before you drive because your GPS may try to get you to go down some pretty unconventional "roads". Last summer when driving through a very rural part of Germany our GPS wanted us to turn on a country bike path then down an unpaved farm road... We had to say "I don't think so" a few times and keep going the way we wanted to go.

I bought a TomTom with French maps on eBay for $35. Had zero issues in 3 weeks of driving around the French countryside in 2015. Of every decision I've ever made in European travel, this one was the biggest no-brainer of them all.

-Matt

I guess I'll add my input as a precaution in contrast to the positive comments above. I have a Garmin Nuvi that, when I moved to France a few years ago, was nearly brand new. I had purchased and loaded European maps, but it has never, not once, worked properly in Europe. After a few months of off-and-on trying, I gave up. It's useless to me and is stuck in a box somewhere with spare cords and whatnot. I use my phone or, if I'm in my car, its GPS for navigation.

I hope you have as positive an experience as the others who have commented, but be aware that your experience may differ from theirs. Knowing what I know now, if I were in your position I would probably consult my mobile phone service provider to see if I could get a reasonably-priced international data plan for the time I was planning to be in France that would allow me to use my phone for navigation.

If your heart is set on using a Garmin while in France, I'd be happy to sell you mine -- cheap! I'm more than willing to use Chronopost (overnight) to ship it to your hotel/B&B/apartment/gite.

I looked into loading France maps on my Garmin last summer but given the cost, and since we only needed it for a couple of days, I just added an international plan to my Verizon phone and used Google maps. It only cost $10 per day and I ended up only using it one day. Our car had GPS and primarily used that. It seems to be pretty standard that rentals in France have GPS, even if you don't order it. YMMV

Be aware that the screen may update more slowly when using a memory card. Really old Garmins can be unable to read modern higher speed or large capacity cards. My last two lifetime update subscriptions have eventually produced update files too big to fit on the internal memory. Whose lifetime did the mean?

My Garmin worked perfectly in France last June. It's very helpful if your GPS shows you when you are exceeding the speed limit, and especially if it's a high enforcement area (e.g. speed cameras), as mine does. It was also helpful that mine also allowed me to enter GPS coordinates for a B & B that provided coordinates instead of a street address.
Ed

Remember that with Google maps you can download the map you need and use it without data transfer. I did that last year in England and it worked fine. The map took up around 100MB for the area between London and Portsmouth. You need to update the map every 30 days or something like that, but you can do that in a hotel room with wifi.

We bought a new Garmin pre-loaded with North America and Western Europe maps for our trip 2 years ago. Worked like a charm for our France trip. No issues whatsoever.

The maps have the 'lifetime' update whatever that means. We have recently updated the maps and will be using the same Garmin for our upcoming trip to France, Switzerland, and possibly a route through Monaco & Italy.

I also use this Garmin in my car that I bought last year so I didn't have to buy the car navigation system.

We still have paper map back-ups and might download (off-network & on wifi) google maps as well just in case. I am too risk adverse to entirely rely on the phone gps.

Thank you everyone for your help, tips and suggestions. We definitely will have a paper map with us and I am researching the cost of a roaming plan for our phone in order to use my iPhone GPS. I am also contacting Garmin Support to see about downloading the European maps on my slightly older Garmin. Glad I left a good amount of time to get this done before we leave!

Just use your cellphone. Whether droid or iPhone, there are free GPS navigation programs to get you anywhere you want to go. Heck, Google Maps will do it all for you....and for FREE (except the SIM card for your phone, but you probably would buy that anyway)

I've been packing along my venerable old Garmin Nüvi for many years and it's been very useful on occasion, especially when driving. It was equipped with both North American and European maps when I bought it, although they probably need to be updated. I tend to use Google Maps on my iPhone for short term use (ie: within cities) but for driving or longer trips the GPS is more cost effective and doesn't have any roaming charges.

If you choose to use your smartphone, google maps, mapquest, and viamichelin all have apps that work pretty well in France.

Last trip (September 2016) was the first time in at least a decade that my GPS didn't make the cut on the packlist.

My device was getting old, so I felt like I'd need to buy something new if I packed it. I decided the money was better spent on a new smart phone that could act as my travel alarm, calendar, reader, music, camera and GPS. I purchased an unlocked Samsung S-7 (came with a British plug on the charger) and bought a local SIM card when I got to France.

I used two apps for navigating. One was Co-pilot. I believe I paid $30 for European maps before the trip, the US version was free and I used it for a month or two before the trip. I like the way Co-pilot works. It's very similar to any GPS, so didn't take much getting used to. It ran fine turning my data off and using satellite only. My old phone ran the app, but didn't run many of the features well - which is why I got a new phone. I also used Google maps. I liked it's search capability better (need data to search but not to navigate). I found myself searching for addresses, when I needed them, on Google then putting the address in CoPilot because I much preferred it's navigation.