International GPS

Marilyn, I prefer to buy a GPS unit that's already equipped with the Maps I'll need. While you could certainly download maps after purchase, the downloads are not cheap. The two most popular brands with people that I know are Garmin (which is what I use) and Tom Tom. The performance of my GPS unit has been good, although it sometimes makes mistakes. I've used it for driving in the U.K. and it's been VERY helpful on a couple of occasions. You might have a look at the "GPS, Smartphone" Thread in the "To The Boot" section of the HelpLine, as there are some comments there that will be relevant to your question. One caveat regarding GPS units - DON'T trust them implicitly! They do make mistakes, so it's necessary to double-check the directions they're providing, either with a Map or with local road signs. Happy travels!

If you don't already own a GPS unit, then I would say probably buy one preloaded with the European maps you need. Learn from our mistake: For our trip about 2 weeks ago, we decided to use the GPS we already own and just downloaded the maps of France that we needed. Well, upon seeing the prices, we decided to opt for the all of Western Europe map at $90, thinking the one time cost would work out fine since we'd use it on all our future trips. It turns out that the file was to big to fit into our GPS's memory, which we only found out after a good deal of time sitting frustrated in front of the computer. we called customer service, who told us they'd refund the $90 and instead sell us the $60 map of just France. After troubleshooting and more frustration in front of the computer, it turned out the maps of France were also too big. We ended up having to delete the US and Canada maps off its memory before we could install France. All in all, trying to buy maps on our own was a fiasco (and this is coming from a fairly tech savvy 20something!).

Our Garmin came with the European maps loaded and works very well in Europe. I have read that there are units which will take a memory card for additional maps. It would be simpler and probably cheaper to get one with the maps already loaded. TomTom is also a good brand.

All will work. All with fail eventually. When they fail, it costs more to fix it than buy a new one. The most simple one will have all the features you need (stick in a place, push 'go'). All will reroute you if you go off course. All will give you accurate distance to destination and a very rough estimated time enroute. Anything else is bells and whistles (the one extra feature I like is having a compass heading display so that when it goes nuts, you still have the basic information on an overcast day, but I wouldn't kill to get it, and most have it in some form). Don't buy a used one since somebody else has sucked part of its life out of it, and if you have to add maps they might not work. Don't buy used map chips since they might not work. Find the model you want. Look at one with preloaded maps and the same model without. Then price the maps. Do whatever is cheaper. If you buy both at the same time the added maps will work, but double-check prior to purchase for compatability (buy both from the same source). Don't ever upgrade maps. Nothing changes that much, they might not fit, and by the time you think you ought to do it the gps is about to fail anyway.

When we bought our Garmin 3-4 years ago we bought the model with the European maps preloaded into it. Now it makes for some interesting driving experiences! Last summer in England, for example, it kept "binging" at us on the motorway to warn us to slow down because of construction. Of course, the construction was completed in the past year or two so we just treated it as alerting us to admire the new guard rails, pavement, etc along the way... We still don't think it's worth the >$150 price tag to upgrade to new maps. 99% of the time it gives very accurate warnings, such as fixed speed cameras along the way. I think we'll still use it this summer in Italy. Having a GPS in Europe has been very helpful (and we have a third passenger to blame in the car if someone makes a wrong turn...).

What a great response! Thank you so much everyone!!

We bought a Garmin Nuvi on Ebay with the Europe map preloaded, prior to our trip in 2008. We learned to use it here in the US and then saved to favorites the addresses of our hotels, museums, and the coordinates of our rural B&B in Normandy in our case. Google Earth can pinpoint coordinates. We also saved the hard to find entrance to the rental car lot which was the smartest thing we did so upon the return in a driving rain at rush hour--no problem. On ours, touch the auto icon on the display to save any location, then label it in the recently found file. Easy to do and a real life saver for things like out of the way places in the countryside that you want to revisit, like a charming little cafe or a farmstead selling their cheeses or sausages. We also bought a Michelin map of our travel area since the GPS likes to take you off the main roads sometimes and get you on one lane rural roads. That might be shorter as the crow flies but something you might want to avoid. Driving was very easy and actually relaxing as we wandered the countryside and along the back roads.