I got one of these for the Germany trip, just because I was going to be travelling a lot by car and couldn't rely on a carefully laid out transit system to get me to the spots on the map I was trying to get to. Now I don't know what kind of cell phone plan you have. Maybe you get fantastic roaming rates on data and can call up Google Maps anywhere on the planet with minimal charges. For those of us who don't want or can't afford massive roaming charges, I would suggest a good, standard GPS unit.
Make sure it actually has maps of where you're going on it, or that it can have maps of where you're going loaded onto it, not all do or can. It doesn't cost you anything to call up maps on it, and you never have to worry about being out of cell phone range. Some of the places I got into didn't have cell coverage, just lots and lots of mountains. It also has all the maps loaded right onto it, so you don't have to wait an eternity for a map to load because of low signal. Letting the GPS plot the route also really helped with getting around completely unfamiliar places.
It took me through a lot of places I would never have seen if I had been navigating off a paper map. I would still recommend carrying a paper map of the general area you're in, just because not every GPS makes for the best map viewer to plan out a route in advance. Also keep in mind that not every GPS will give you a route without any exact address to take you to, so you might have to get creative with the programming to get to the next town. I can say I have no intention of travelling without one though. It's saved me a lot of time and headache getting around countries that I would have surely gotten lost in.
Full Post
No comments:
Post a Comment