Global Position System

The answer is yes, a hundred times yes. Tom Tom 920 or 930 come with a European Map, think that Garmin Nuvi also does, if you're buying you want one of those. If you're renting one you'll take what they give you. Last year someone drove around Germany for a week "with a German woman yelling at us the whole time, we didn't know how to switch the language or turn her off."

With respect to the Garmin GPS units, yes they do offer European maps. The "Nuvi" units with numbers ending in 70 have European maps built in. The 270, 670 and 770 units have them. Be careful if you choose to purchase as the cost of adding a European map afterwards is high, around $300.

Adding European maps to a TomTom (if you buy a model that doesn't come with them) runs about $100.

We used our Garmin nuvi 270 (pre-loaded with European maps) this past April in Germany and it was a life saver!

Or, just rent a car that includes a GPS. One warning, though, I found that the GPS was not infallible in some rural areas of France.

Dorothy, I definitely agree with the points mentioned by the others. On the last few trips to Europe, I've packed a Garmin Nuvi 370 along and it has really helped on a couple of occasions. However as mentioned in a previous post, GPS units sometimes choose rather curious routing, so I'd suggest also packing along a good Map (Michelin?). The 370 (and some other models) are also small enough to be carried in a pocket, so can be used while walking around cities.

Happy travels!

From someone who tried to navigate Italy without one - either get one or bone up on your Italian so you can stop regularly for directions.

I haven't driven everywhere but generally did well in Northern Europe. I found the signage to be logical and available.

In Italy there are virtually no street signs. Even the autostrada exits have arrows pointing to random towns you have never heard of (rarely is the town the logical largest town/city you would expect), I found myself wrestling with the map to see if those towns were on our route or not.

Even when you know you will merge onto another autostrada going West, the exit that appears to go West invariably bends around and takes you East. You then lose 10-20 minutes finding an exit, paying your toll, getting over the autostrada and finding an onramp in your desired direction.

Since that experience, I bought a TomTom 920. The company just released the 930 so the 920 model should be on sale now.

I like the fact that it has walking and bike modes and comes with European maps preinstalled. It also has internal navigation so it doesn't stop when you go through a tunnel or lose a sattelite link.

Just to illustrate how easy it is to drive with a GPS and how useful: first time we used one we couldn't switch the language either. It ran in German for 2 weeks. The first day I translated for my driving husband but by the end of the day he stopped me as the commands are really easy and you memorize them in no time.

We got our TomTom through the internet, got better prices by shipping it from the US than in Calgary. Well, what else would you expect .... You just have to act soon to allow for shipping time before you leave for your trip.

Thanks so much for your help, everyone! We'll be trying to get one here before we leave!

Dorothy, I got my handheld one online already preloaded with the European maps. Ironically it was from a Canadian website, so I knwo you won't have problems locating it. Happy travels, lol!!!

Hi Dorothy - We just got back from Ireland and used a Garmin 670. It worked very well, keeping us looking at the sites and not in a map. I suspect that Italy, Greece and France are like Ireland in that the routes are defined by place name rather than route number or street name. The Nuvi was right nearly every time, and when it was wrong (or when we made a wrong turn), it self corrected bt invoking the ubiquitous "recalculating"). Also, in your case it may overcome the language barrier.

One thing to note is that my Garmin came with the right to upgrade to City Navigator Europe NT 2008 which is a newer map. I thought it was a downloadable update, but discovered that it was a CD and required 4 -6 weeks for delivery from Garmin. You can contact them and request that delivery be expedited if you need the upgrade sooner. It cost me $25 to get it by overnight delivery.

Hank