My recent 6-week road trip through Europe.

[explanade]

We had no problem following Garmin instructions at roundabouts. The other thing we liked was the fact that the Garmin unit was held by a suction cup tool on the front window, no looking down to follow a map. Also the voice was clear and not annoying.

I've packed a Garmin on trips but it means another device, a dash mount of some kind and its own power cables.

One of the reasons I switched to using smart phone for navigation is that I just need a mount for the iPhone.

I got a little vent clip, which is very small. However, I'm finding a lot of rental cars make it difficult to use that clip because they have some weird vent designs these days. In those cases, I put my iPhone in a cup holder while connected to the charger (cigarette lighter to USB port).

I would periodically pick it up and glance at it. Not optimal but it does work.

I can get a more bulky suction cup holder for my iPhone but I try to avoid having to pack that.

 

[neihn]

folks - thanks for maps and phone tips. I think I get an idea now.

 

[FireFool]

Maps:

A portable GPS such as a Garmin may be better than a map app on a smartphone. I don't know, but the above was my experience. Google map on a phone is plenty good for walking around town though. It ran down the battery fast, however.

Phone:

About the phone, I had AT&T service back then, and paid $40/month additional during the trip to get international coverage, so that I could call or text the Airbnb hosts to arrange for arrival. What AT&T allowed for data was so meager, and I went over it on my last day in Paris when using Uber to get transport to the airport. That month, instead of the $40 extra, it cost me $100!

My traveling companions had T-Mobile, and they were surfing all the time with the free international coverage. We now are on T-Mobile 55+ plan, which offers the same.

I did two Europe trips this year. Both times I added the International travel plan option to my Verizon phone. For $40 (less any discounts you might have - shh, still have my corp. discount being applied) you get 100mb, 100 texts and 100 minutes to use over a 30 day period. This works better than buying a SIM card in that you get to keep your phone number (although I didn't have any local/Europe people calling me - which might be an Int'l call for them) and also allows roaming across multiple countries if that's your itinerary. The data is meager and I had to actively manage/limit my usage (I did o.k. on our 10 day Greece trip, but went over on our Amsterdam to Basel and then London 3 week trip - incremental $25/100mb). Things you can/should do are download google maps while on WI-FI, do your searches for destinations and pre-pin their locations while on WI-FI, and shut-off all but your important apps access to cellular in your "Settings" "Cellular Data" - and definitely forget about posting/looking at anything on Facebook over cellular.

When travelling I always carry around an external battery with short 2" cables to charge/connect my phone to while on the go. I definitely would have had a hard time navigating London's trains/buses without Google maps - with it I it was always a breeze for us to get wherever we needed to, knowing what train/bus # options were available for that moment in time.

Hope this helps someone ...

 

[explanade]

100 MB is not a lot of data.