GPS AND NAVIGATION SYSTEM

If you buy the Tom Tom or alikes you can use them for driving as well as walking inside the cities. You can pre-program a route you want to walk and then just follow the directions. Just make sure you upload the map material of the country and area of destination. By the way, for Tom Tom you can even upload speed check and speed trap points, which can save you a buck or two ;-)...

Did you buy it state side or over there A?

We just returned from a month in Italy and when we lwft Venice we got a rental car from Auto Europe. Although we had not requested one, our car came with a navigation system and it was really useful. There were several hurtles, however. Directions were in Italian. At our lodgings in Tuscany, A man helped us put it into English and program it.We went to the Sibillini Mountains , and several other places that would have been difficult without it. You can program them to go the fastest way, the most scenic way, etc. You have to put in return trip to get you home again from your destination. We dropped off the car in La Spezia and again used the system to get to Auto Europe from Umbria. It was great.

I have a Garmin C340, and bought the Europe navigator software. It allows you to select what parts of Europe you need to download to the SD card that fits in the GPS unit. The instructions are fairly simple. I would HIGHLY recommend it, even though we have driven without it a couple of times and had no problems.

A word of warning - when selecting what maps to load, err on the side of more sections rather than fewer. Last summer the GPS tried to take us the long way around the Zurichsee because I had neglected to load one map that touched on the lake. To the GPS, there was no there there!

Thank you everybody. John I agree with you I think you are on the right track with Garmin. I am looking for Nuvi 670( they have both maps of Europe and NA already loaded. But they are so expensive up here!

We found our Tom Tom invaluable. However, we frequently lost signal while in cities with tall buildings....

We also rented a car through Auto Europe, and while we did not request a car with navigation, it came with one. We found it to be invaluable.