Car rental-GPS

Get your own GPS now with Europe maps and learn to use it, save Irish addresses to favorites, how to mark your current location, etc. We also used a Michelin map but the GPS is the key to a hassle free trip. Don't rely on the rental company GPS. Amazon has a wide selection with Europe maps. It made our trips SO hassle free with the GPS we knew how to use. We never got lost and it gave us tremendous peace of mind driving in a foreign country.

Diane, George is absolutely right. We took our own gps to England and it made life so much easier. We preprogrammed some things in before we left.
It took us to the wrong place once (a farmer's field instead of Hidcote Manor) but we just reprogrammed it and went on our way. We would never consider a trip without using it.

Suggested, probably. Necessary, probably not. I've done it both ways. The only exception would be getting into Dublin from the west. If you decide to go with one, do what George said and bring your own. As a bit of information, Best Buy now matches Amazon prices if you want to fiddle with one rather than buying a pig in a poke. You know how the no-booth toll roads work, right?

I'm with everybody else. Get your own GPS, learn ow to use it. The GPS in the rental car very likely will have no manual. Load your destinations, get a good paper map for back up and you are ready. I'm just back from a week in Ireland and I would add that if you are doing B&B's with funny addresses, check their web sites etc. to see if they give latitude and longitude. Between the UK and Ireland I had 3 out of 16 locations that the Lat. & Long. did the job when Ms. Garmin couldn't recognize the street names. One of the things that drove me crazy on the trip was how often street names change. I noticed one road in Edinburgh that changed names 5 times in 1 mile. They also frequently don't have street signs like we do which makes a GPS really valuable. The paper map is just so you can keep track of where you are in the larger scheme of things. Have a good time and stay left.

I am convinced now--and I want one less thing to think about -- when staying left. I am all for anything that will make that part of it easier. Thanks for all of the input.

Driving in Ireland is like driving in 1950s Britain...get a sat nav in the US that has European maps BUT...before you go download the latest mapping! Don't wait until you go. Some GPS systems say they do the US and Europe but wont hold both sets of mapping data so you need to download it anyway. You don't want to download 5 hrs worth of data in a hotel room on your first day of holiday. Perhaps get a spare memory card and download the new data onto that so you still have the old one just in case the download fails. The other option is just to turn up and buy a cheap GPS in a local supermarket

So, I am going to bring my own gps and am going to put maps of Ireland on it. Will I be able to just type in addresses or some one mentioned something that started with IRL (duh--does that stand for Ireland?)

When we rented our car for our month in England, we did not pay for a GPS in the rental agreement. We brought out own. When we picked-up the car in Cardiff, the agent asked us, again, if we wanted a GPS (at $19 USD per day). Again, we refused, explaining we'd brought our own. When he brought our car to the door and began explaining the features, lo and behold, it came with a built-in GPS, which, said the agent, was in all these rental models (4-door sedan) as standard equipment. So, we would have paid for something which was already free to us. We were quite annoyed at this and asked him why he offered the GPS, at a cost, when the vehicle was already set-up for it. He just shrugged and said, "Don't worry about it!" Anyway, our own GPS worked like a charm (we'd already programmed-in addresses) and we had the built-in to use, if we wanted a back-up. I'd say, bring your own, to be sure and you might be surprised to have the same experience as we had. Don't pay for a GPS until you are at point of pick-up, as many rental cars seem to have them already, as standard equipment. Enjoy your trip. We did Ireland, in 1996, without any GPS and with only the map provided with the rental. It was easy. GPS are nice, but a map is just as good!!!