Travel by car-maps

Download the app Maps.me and then download the maps for Ireland. Then you can navigate without cellular service.

Download Google maps for offline use so that wifi isn’t necessary. We navigated all over the island that way with no problems.

What Tom said. I've used maps.me for trips to Spain, France, Scotland and Italy.... works like a charm
Brad

I pre-mark all my destinations on Google Maps and then download for offline use the destination. With the locations pre-saved, it’s easy to plug in directions without data or WiFi. Google maps did great for me in Ireland in 2019. Don’t forget a mount for your phone if you plan to do that. I have never had one come with a rental car but it sure is nice to have.

Google maps worked great for us too. Simply select your route when you have mobile data or WiFi, then turn mobile data off to navigate - uses hardly any data at all. Try it at home to familiarize yourself with how to do it, but it really couldn't be easier.

I have both a Garmin and Google maps downloaded for offline use. I use the Google maps for those really small out of the way places not on my Garmin maps. Remember to put you phone into airplane mode when using them so your phone turns into essentially a GPS unit and doesn’t use any data.

I used offline Google Maps and iPhone Airplane mode in Ireland. Works great!
A few suggestions: Check the route, use the big roads. We were once directed across a farmer's field instead of the straightforward main highway. Target a public parking lot in the center of town rather than the address of the pub. You will not want to parallel park a strange car on the wrong side of the street while shifting with the wrong hand and looking over the wrong shoulder. Municipal parking and a short walk is far less stressful. If possible, have someone else navigate while the driver concentrates on staying on the correct side of the road and avoiding the rock walls, etc.

I don't use GPS navigation, ever, and am tired of traveling for work with drivers who do and we get sidetracked half an hour listening to Siri misdirect us while I plead from the backseat, "We are going the wrong way!" to no avail. Siri = God I guess. Had a taxi driving leaving LaGuardia in August using Waze who totally got us lost.

Anyway, I had never figured out the Google online maps download, and on the second online tutorial I just viewed I figured out that there's a hidden step nobody mentions where you have to swipe up and completely obscure the map you want to download to bring up the triple dots to pick to get the download option.

Anyway not doing that, downloading all the maps for a country on maps.me is preferable, then I have all the maps I will ever need. Without service a dot will show your location and dynamically bring up any directions you select as you go, while driving (using a person to navigate), to any new location you want. It will also save locations for you.

Tom_MN brings up a good point about using common sense with a GPS. On one occasion in Spain. the GPS had me going through a field to get up to a castle rather than going up the hill on a normal road. On another occasion the GPS tried to take me on a non-existent road that supposedly ran parallel to the highway. There are times when a GPS is simply wrong and one must use common sense to get to the destination.

In my particular instance of sidetracked a half hour the garmin dataset was not current, and the reconfiguration of highways in central Merced put us momentarily off the basemap and it just got lost, confidently sending us to Modesto when we wanted due north.

The problem with switching from Siri to one's own brain is often people following Siri don't know which way is north, or which direction is up, or even what state/country they are in. It makes it hard to suddenly snap out of a stupor, think, deduce, and find the correct way to go.