Although I still don't like the changes to My Maps in the past couple of years, I still use it because I haven't found anything I like better. And I do like to have a record of all the things I've found (some, like my NYC map, are ridiculously hard to read because I've been adding pins to it for many years )

While we have started buying local sims for our android phones in the past couple years of travel, if we don't have that access, we'd still have internet for our laptop in the hotel or rental apartment so could look stuff up before leaving....

In the past, we've used a handheld GPS (you can get gps coordinates of Google Maps prior to travel and either write them down or enter them into the GPS as well)