GPS or map for Tuscany Hill towns

If you use the Search box, you will find some regular Europe visitors who buy their own Garmin (or whatever, or Downloaded Google Maps) with Europe data. I mention that because it can be cheaper than paying the rental company for outdated(?) map loads! So if you like a GPS at home, I suggest in in Italy.

But I want to mention that no GPS and no paper retail map has ZTLs on it. I enjoyed having my own GPS in Tuscany last year, but it will constantly advise you to drive through ZTLs. For example, I could not get good navigation to the large, outside the walls parking lot I knew of, and wanted near Siena. The GPS kept telling me to drive right through the center of the city on the shortest route!

I would also mention that no map or GPS can find you an empty parking space in high season!

I use GPS and also have a paper map. That way my wife can look at possible places to stop which she couldn’t do without a paper map. On my next trip, I’m also going to download a Google map to my phone and tablet for offline use.

We always use Google Maps on our iPhones. It has worked in some amazingly isolated places. It's what we are used to using at home, so we're not having to deal with some unfamiliar system while in Italy. For ZTLs we just watch for the signs, but it sure would be nice if they appeared on the maps!

Really good paper maps are OK, but not much help when you're at some tangled cloverleaf or roundabout.

We just got back a few weeks ago from Tuscany and our rental car had a GPS (worked reasonably well on the larger roads). However, most of the time when we drove we used Waze on our iPhone. It helped us locate parking, gave us the real-time road conditions. However, if you use your iPhone, bring a charger. Our car had a USB connection, but we brought our car charger anyway just in case. Also, you will burn through your data plan using your phone. We purchased from AT&T the one day pass for $10 which allowed us to use our normal data plan from home.

Have a great trip.
Sandy

Another vote for a smart phone if you have one. You don't need phone service in Italy (so no cost) to use your phone as a GPS - just download the maps ahead of time. For example, Google Maps "offline" will let you download the Tuscany map into your phone while you are WiFi. Just keep the phone in Airplane Mode while you are driving. You can try it out at home first to see how it works this way.

It's not an "either or" question. Never, ever rely exclusively on just a single source (especially an electronic one) for critical tasks - eg navigation. If you want to use a GPS/phone/tablet/whatever, great. You still should have a good map along (bring it from home - you won't be able to find one there). Gizmos fail - all the time - for a variety of reasons. Maps don't stop working because the battery's low, you've driven across some border, you lost the charging cord or block, it was stolen, or somebody dropped it.

Even if your gizmo is working, you are so much better off if you have a god map out and available to cross-reference and do a sanity check. I've had GPS and phones send me off in the wrong direction on a drive that would have resulted in us arriving 4 hours late, miss a ferry, and would have caused a cascading crash of our plans for days. Fortunately, I had a good map open and available for a quick sanity check, which resulted in a "correction" and saved 3 days of a trip. Anyone who blindly and blithely follows whatever their GPS is bleating at them is asking for trouble.

We have a chip for European maps that fits in our Garmin, also paper maps. However this year we will use offline Google maps with GPS to save packing the GPS.

Use your phone or IPad with a local SIM Card.
Google Maps work

Totally agree with David, paper maps cant go technical, plus they are beautiful imformative things!

We used both. They were both useful. By the third day, we could actually just follow road signs for many of our jaunts. GPS works well for place to place. Maps work better in towns.

Never blindly follow GPS. Verify. The good news is that ZTLs are well marked. We had no problem avoiding them. We used our own GPS with a map card for Italy. It was cheaper than rental. In addition, we were able to save the addresses of our agriturismo and other sites before we left home. We hooked it up at the rental facility, went to our saved address and it took us right to Greve.