Travelling to Europe..what mapping to use??

If this is a one-time trip and you don't plan to return to Europe soon, I'll suggest you look into the City Navigator Europe NT Map on microSD/SD card. You could buy from Garmin, Amazon, eBay (new or used), etc.

My reasoning for suggesting this is two-fold:

-first, your nuvi with US maps will be untouched since the European map will be on the card, so when you return home and pop out the card, you're back to a stock US nuvi. Also, there's no software installation process when using the preloaded SD cards other than popping the card into the nuvi--easy as pie.

-second, since maps on Garmin-loaded SD cards work in any compatible Garmin product and are not tied to your specific nuvi serial number, once home you can resell the Garmin map-SD card on eBay or whatever to the next person planning to take their nuvi on a once-in-a-lifetime European vacation. You'll recover some of your initial cost and the buyer of your card will likely pay less than retail. Win-win.

If buying on eBay, be very clear that you're buying a genuine Garmin-made map on SD card and not a copy since the map is tied to the specific SD card Garmin used when the factory loaded the map onto the card. You don't want to support software pirates--besides, copies won't work!

On eBay, do a search for garmin europe map sd and you'll likely find 40-50 items being offered. I see several 2012 maps offered--you may also find earlier versions of the map at a bit more of a discount.

PS--You mention downloading European POI files from here at the POI Factory. A great idea--but those are just points of interest--you still need a map of the areas of Europe you'll be visiting.

PPS--Have fun across the pond!

You might also look into maps from http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/

Thanks CraigW.
That is what Garmin suggested too. However, like I asked in my post...since I will be using this GPS only while walking within the city limits, I'm not so sure I need a map of the areas that I will be visiting. While travelling in and around the various countries, I will be using public transportation (trains, planes, etc.) So, again, I'm just not so sure that I actually need to buy the whole maps?!?! I'm not sure what to do. Thanks again.

I don't think, that you can buy maps for single cities. And even if they will be available cost will be not really interesting. From this point of view I see couple solutions:

1. Try to look for free maps on internet. There are free projects for mapping European countries. Many (if not most) are made for Garmin devices. You can download and use them for free and usually they have pretty good coverage of big cities.
Try to look on this website: http://mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com/

2. You can use smartphone with build-in gps if you have one. There is a few topics here about how it works. Just be careful with cell phone charges, especially abroad. In Europe you can buy prepaid cell phone cards with data transfers if your phone allows use of different sim cards and will work in Europe.

3. Paper maps. If you are walking only in cities it may be simplest and cheapest to buy paper maps and eventually some sort of travel guide book. Or just find interesting places on internet and than mark them on paper map.

POIs in City Navigator are inferior to POIs from this site. Especially lately POIs on European CN are rather messy. I saw many doubles or old, expired places. But this doesn't mean that they are all junk. If you are looking for sorts like museums or landmarks they will be there.

On the other hand there is nothing wrong with installing in addition POI Factory data. Practically everyone here is doing this, and that was the reason to create this site.

I appreciate being on a budget, but if this is truly a once in a lifetime trip, I personally think you should be getting the official Garmin maps as a baseline, and then augmenting those with POI lists that you can find for the areas you think you might be visiting.

Sure, you can get away with just POI lists, but without the map as a reference, you might find it hard to walk to a specific POI. You might be tempted to walk directly to a POI, but that might not be possible in quaintly cramped European cities.

As has already been suggested, http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/ might offer a cheaper (read: free) alternative, but if you don't want to wrestle with getting that to work, spend the money...

If you have a POI file of sites to visit in a city but no map, you'd be given line-of-sight directions from point to point--not good if you need a bridge to cross a body of water, a way around large buildings, etc. With a detailed map, you'd be given directions to points along streets, etc. Even if you have a detailed non-Garmin (i.e., usually free) map, make sure it's a routable map to avoid being directed through deep water, cement block walls, etc.

As another pointed out, the cost of the Garmin map is tiny compared to your overall vacation costs--if it were me, I'd either buy the map and take the GPS with me, or I'd leave the GPS at home.

You can read my report of using the cityXplorer download map of Barcelona that I just posted the other day and read about the plus and minus of my experience.

Its is on the Garmin Tricks & Tips website.

Go to http://bit.ly/garmin_gps_tricks

Click on 'Recent Additions' and choose
3790y cityXplorera BARCELONA - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Public Transportation (Metro) excellent.
Walking may not be so good -- see article

Gary Hayman

We have been several times and my Garmin has been so helpful.

We bought the City Navigator Europe NT maps and put it on SD card but put the places we are going on the gps itself. We were on a tour but with our free time these maps were great.

You can not use the POIs without the maps. Be sure and get the POIs from this site as the ones on the maps are like the ones on the US, (not all there) and also go to Google Earth and look at the places you are going and see if you can find places you want to make POIs for.

A little thing we found out in Venice, the roads are just small trails and the buldings block the GPS in most of the city. When this happens put the GPS on simulation and find the street you are on and this will give you a (paper) map. We did get lost in Venice but it was fun.

Just came back from Europe trip (England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria) - Europe City Navigator on micro SD card is the way to go.

Wow! Quite a response from everyone!

Thanks much!

I think I will buy the maps.

...well, in a way. The most annoying thing when in Pedestrian Mode, is that the map does not move with the user. In other words – when in automobile mode, as your car leaves the area being displayed, the display moves with the car – thus displaying the new area the car is in. In PD mode, when the walker leaves the area displayed, the map remains static and the walker icon disappears. At this point you will need to manually slide the map to display the new area. For me this deficiency was such a pain that once I just gave up on using CX when visiting San Francisco.
Besides, if you bother to search and read various reviews regarding CX maps, you'll find out that the public transit information there is not complete, to start with. And while in London, for example, nothing beats the good old and famous paper tube map. Same goes for metro networks in any other city.
I personally think that it is still a good idea to buy the complete Europe map, which will give you road maps for each of your visited cities as well, and as far as public transportation is concerned, I personally would do some homework and prepare paper maps – at least for the underground networks (well, the subway, you know what I mean…) for me planning, researching and gathering information prior to going there was always half the fun, anyway

Agree with Elig99 - some additional prep with paper maps will help - particularly with "tube". And you do have to manually "slide" the map in Pedestrian mode. On my trip I outlined our agenda and used the CityXplorer Maps in conjunction with a guide book and some paper maps I put together - helped a lot because we were pretty flexible on destinations and sights to see in a couple of the cities we visited.