Review on 🗺️ Garmin Europe NT - UK/Ireland City Navigator SD Memory Card (010-10691-00) by Carlos Phillips

Although the Ireland SD card was purchased in January 2013 I only used it on a 10 day trip in late July 2013. We ended up driving over 900 miles in 7 days. We drove first from Dublin to Adare in Limerick about 135 miles which was our base for 6 days. From there we made day trips to Dingle (82 miles), Doolen and Cliffs of Moher (59 miles), Killarney (57 miles), with daily round trips, often through small towns, to Adare. There were also several closer stations such as Bunratty, Limerick & Cashel. After a stopover in Kildare we returned to Dublin and spent the day learning about Howth & Dalkey. The SD card was installed in my Garmin 1490 LMT which can be finicky and requires the user to understand how to enter locations. I was training at home on familiar roads before I even thought about taking this machine abroad. Luckily Garmin's support staff are second to none, they are real real-time people, patient and able to explain the most complex functions like route planning, factory resets etc (none of this needs to be done). use alternative SD cards). ). My older, less complex Garmin Nuvi 750 had the wonderful ability to swipe the map with my finger, tap a location, and set that location as a destination. The 1490 is springy, it keeps bouncing back to where you started with this easy way of relative navigation in unfamiliar territory, which is disappointing to say the least. Having an accurate address is of course the best strategy, but particularly in Ireland, addresses aren't what you're used to in the US and are often just the name of your destination, sometimes with or without a number added (Dublin 2; Adair, Adair .). In the US, it's fairly easy to find 1 Main Street in almost every city. I found that when all else failed, searching for town halls, community centers, churches, or natural formations often worked surprisingly well. If you could point out something close, Garmin has worked and has worked amazingly well and accurately. It was able to lock on to satellites quickly, stay fixed, and track with ease. It even surprised me when I came across a street that didn't have a name yet and called it "New Street"! As others have said in their reviews, driving in Ireland can be stressful at times. The infrastructure is in good condition, but if you drive on the right, you drive on the left (when renting, use the automatic system!). Motorways are easiest to drive when you navigate them. The left lane is the entry, exit and slow lane while the fast lane is on the right. If you drive on the right side, you will appear to meet oncoming traffic because you are on the right side of the vehicle and are now closer than ever to the US highway. When you are on secondary and tertiary roads, they are mostly single lane and very, very narrow. All cars have folding mirrors, and with good reason! The Irish don't mind, it's their norm, and I was amazed to see even 18-wheelers making their way around tight corners and no-headroom roads with a smile on their face. !The Garmin Ireland map takes a lot of the load off the whole process. I had blind faith in Garmin's ability to get me from point A to point B and back, and it didn't disappoint, lead me to a dead end, or mislead me (which happened in the US!). The map is great, don't forget to save all the places in your favorites folder (e.g. Ireland) so you can come back next time!