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Gps For European Sightseeing


legalsea

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Hello all. Seeking advice. Live in USA, planning trip to western europe. Never had GPS before. Is GPS useful for sightseeing in London, Rome, etc? Can one tap in "St. Paul's Cathedral' and get directions to it, and then be able to backtrack to hotel?

 

What make/model would you recommend? I've been looking at Garmin Quest, which apparently takes the City Select Europe (for $$$ extra cost). Anyone have experience using same or similar?

 

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

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Yes, GPS is VERY useful for sightseeing! Glad you said WESTERN Europe as opposed to Eastern - Garmin's European maps cover Western Europe, but not Eastern. With the proper maps, you can lookup certain Points of Interest (POIs), and navigate to that end. Depending on the GPSr and maps used, it can give you turn-by-turn directions to the POI. The Quest with City Select Europe will in fact do that! Some other models would simply show your position, show the POI's position, and draw a line between here and there. I cannot say specifically that St. Paul's Cathedral is a POI in CSE, but I'm willing to bet that it is. I have an old version of MetroGuide Europe and found a "Cathedrale Saint Paul" in Belgium. It's also very good at finding restaurants and shopping too!

 

How will you be traveling about in Europe? Renting a car? Bus, Train? If renting a car, then the Quest would probably be a very fine selection. If going by bus or train, it might be a bit bulky to carry around and stow in a bag, etc., and a different unit might be preferable.

Edited by Neo_Geo
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Thanks for the reply! In the past we have rented cars in Europe, but this time we are taking a cruise around Great Britain and so visiting several places. I have been looking at the Quest and the City Select Europe map (which said map cost fully as much as the Quest). I simply could not get any definitive answer about the usefulness of the map for a walker about town. I am also reading up about geocaching; sounds like the kind of activity I would enjoy. Thanks again.

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I've checked the specs on the Quest, and it actually appears to be slightly smaller than my 60C. Still, the Quest is mainly designed for automotive navigation, and therefor not well-suited for walking around. As far as I know, the Quest has no means of connecting a lanyard, and is not nearly as durable as a handheld model - so there is a certain amount of risk in using that model. On the other hand, if that risk is okay with you, then you'll have a nice automotive unit to use when you get back to the states.

 

But considering that you are interested in Geocaching, then it is advisable that you consider a handheld unit instead. There are mounts available to help a handheld stay in place on a car's dashboard. If you become a hardcore Geocaching addict, then sooner or later the unit would probably encounter a few extra G-forces (against a rock or into a creek).

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Hello all. Seeking advice. Live in USA, planning trip to western europe. Never had GPS before. Is GPS useful for sightseeing in London, Rome, etc? Can one tap in "St. Paul's Cathedral' and get directions to it, and then be able to backtrack to hotel?

 

What make/model would you recommend? I've been looking at Garmin Quest, which apparently takes the City Select Europe (for $$$ extra cost). Anyone have experience using same or similar?

 

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

Your better off with the handheld if your walking around...you can backtrack with any gps anywhere in the world...as long as you mark your starting position or have the tracking turned on.

 

As far as the maps, the Garmin web site has a map viewer for their european maps that you can actually see the maps and decide if you like them....would be a no-brainer to be able to find your way around all the unfamiliar streets with the 60CS and city select europe v7.

 

Check it out on the upper right corner of this page http://www.garmin.com/cartography/mapSourc...yselectEuro.jsp

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I've carried a Quest and see no problem using it as a handheld GPS for either walking around or for geocaching. It's actually smaller and lighter than a 60 series model and has the same waterproof specification. It doesn't strike me as particularly fragile either but unfortunately testing that can't really be done nondestructively. For traveling it has the advantage of a bigger memory of 115 MB (the euro model is even better at 243 MB but more $$).

 

BTW, if you're planning to use the european maps mainly for walking around town and are price conscious, then you might consider using the MetroGuide-Europe ones rather than CitySelect-Europe. You'd lose the auto-routing function, but you'd still have the same maps and POIs and the price is much more reasonable (about $120 vs. $270). They'd also be easier to resell later since they don't have any unlock codes to complicate things.

 

I've found that for walking it's easy enough to just glance at the map and see how to get to the indicated POI location. If you're used to geocaching then you already know how to walk to a spot with just the arrow and distance to go as guidance and the map display lets you know if there are any things like an intervening river to worry about.

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