After two weeks of driving through from Germany to Italy, be aware that if you on "new construction" your GPS will become very confused. Sometimes, you are driving on nonexistent roads on your GPS, and sometimes the roads have been "moved". So here's what we did to overcome "Garmin Confusion": 1) If the confusion comes at a round-about, tell the driver to just keep going until you, as the Navigator, have time to read/understand the signs and find the sign for the city you are going towards. Easier than finding a place to turn around only to head back into the same round-about. 2) If the confusion is just plain new construction, ignore the GPS and again know what cities you are driving toward or away from.
3) The Garmin always tells you what street name to turn on, but it's rare that you actually see a sign with the street name. So pay attention as to whether the turn is in .2 or .1 miles or 200 feet. Until we got used to this, we'd turn too soon or too late. Even though signage is in kilometers, we kept the GPS in Miles/feet as it was easier for us to judge those distances.
Posted by
Florida, USA
12172 posts
I recommend a map update prior to your trip. I'm hugely upset with TomTom at the moment. I hope Garmin performs well because they're likely to be my brand of choice in the future.
Posted by
Gaston, Oregon, USA
931 posts
Karen, great advice...thanks for posting! This is standard for any GPS. That is why we don't leave home without a small Michelin fold out map of the EU country were we will be traveling. We have been using a GPS for traveling in the US, and EU since 2007. This June we were warned that many of the newer East-West roads in Spain were not "on our GPS". We could not have made some of our destinations without using the map to navigate from one small city to the next. Another fun experience is some of the "goat trails" that our GPS sometimes wants to send us down. If it looks like a goat trail it will be a goat trail; so be prepared to look for an alternate route on your map. The GPS is not infallable, but with time and experience we have found it to be invaluable.
Posted by
San Francisco, CA
166 posts
The other advantage of a Michelin or similar map is that scenic routes and/or towns and villages are typically marked. That can really make a trip spectacular vs. mundane. Then you can ignore your GPS (which is typically optimizing for the fastest route vs. the scenery!) Mathew
Posted by
Los Angeles
1825 posts
GPS is great but like most things, learning how to use it in a foreign country is going to make it a lot harder. I used mine so much at home that judging which turn on the roundabouts wasn't all that hard. You can tell by the angle which turn to take before entering. My wife would always call out how many roads till the one we wanted and usually she got it wrong. This was all in Southern France. We only hit one area of new construction which the GPS wasn't up to date on. I wonder how often they printed maps compared to the GPS? Any inconvenience we may have had from the GPS was far outweighed by it's advantages. It really took a lot of the stress out of driving. Practice with it before you go.
Posted by
Jacksonville, Florida, US
68 posts
Brad- what is your issue with TomTom? We used it two years ago in Italy and found it a lifesaver. We are going again in March and I plan to update the maps just before we leave.
Posted by
Cincinnati, OH, USA
13 posts
Garmin has individual country or a Europe chip for many of their units that work great, but having a rough idea of where you need to go is always smart. I usually use google maps to print out an enlarged map around my hotel, and michelin has a nice route planning site for europe.
Posted by
Auburn, Alabama
1064 posts
Even a map update doesn't always help. I updated my Garmin maps in May, a few days before a trip, and it still did not pick up new and rerouted roads in Reims. This happened in two different locations a few miles apart. But, with a little trial and error, we were able to figure things out both times, and eventually the GPS got its bearings and led us to our hotel. Since this was due to recent roadwork, things probably would not have been any different with a paper map. It does help to have studied the map ahead of time, so you have an idea of what the road network should look like.
Posted by
Little Rock, AR
105 posts
I cannot imagine navigating Italy without a Garmin. The biggest issue we had was on roundabouts, where it was not always consistent on "first, second, third" road off. Having an eagle-eyed co-pilot made up for that. The few faults it did have were far overcome by how truly helpful it was.