GPS - It helps, mostly.

GPS devices are handy little gadgets, up to a point, but still it's nice to have a really good map. So even with our trusty GPS guide the Phactors have made their share of wrong turns, but yesterday while threading our way through a little Tuscan hill town, the GPS said, "turn right here", and we did driving right up a dead-end alley. And there at the end of the alley, where in a classic example of good advise given way too late, was a sign, in English, that said, "Don't follow GPS".  Now the GPS device knew exactly where we were, but it did not know that the road was no longer there. In just the few minutes of our alley tour, two more cars whose occupants were studying their GPS devices drove up the same bloody alley to find the same sign.  What fun! And on twisty, narrow hilly roads, our device took great delight in yelling out "turn sharply right" and "turn sharply left" in response to the hair pin curves with the added advice each time to stay on this road, the only one around, and to not stay on the road would have been a short, quick trip to the bottom. On one occasion when the Phactors made a turn in error, the result of "turn left" being a multiple choice question, our trusty guide said, "make a U-turn if at all possible". Now your really have to screw things up for it to dredge up that instruction. And then later the GPS required an apology because when following a route the Phactors thought they had mastered, the device was turned off to give us some well deserved peace and quiet, and immediately we got lost in the tangle of little streets. And of course there is the classic, "lost satellite signal", just when you are most desperate for information. Sigh.