> Roads, road names, traffic restrictions - pretty much every part of it is chaotic and incredibly hard to put together without a GPS on a digital map.

If digital maps on GPS know about directions, then so does the internet, and the directions can be printed or jotted down in advance which is my go-to solution in new cities. A little trip planning makes trips safer and less stressful. You also end up remembering it faster. Regularly using a GPS provably atrophies parts of our brains in MRI scan studies. We were evolved to regularly reason about our position in the physical world and making decisions about where to turn from our own memories.

> On the family aspect too, do you have a Matrix or similar for the larger family to connect through and share news on (their own travel for eg., or difficulties they might be having, or news like child birth), or do you only use phone calls or texts to connect?

We helped move all family to Matrix. Most also use Facebook, but everyone worth talking to understands it is not reasonable to ask us to agree to Zucks terms of service to talk to them. They probably created facebook accounts in the first place for the same reason, so we do not feel bad about this ask.

That said we also ported our cell phone numbers to a voip provider so we can still access calls/texts from any wifi device, or DECT phones around our home.