I had a similar experience with a female friend who was in the area of my workplace and asked me to meet up after work. She told me she's in a bar in the area (gave me the name of the freaking district, and it's a big district) and I'm like "send me the exact location of the bar because it's a huge district." She gets annoyed and sends me the location which turns out to be a 10 minute walk on the on the opposite side of the street of where the bar actually was. She sends me the wrong direction and scoffs, "I thought men were better at directions." Was pretty annoying.
I think in general compared to men, yes they are bad at directions, but my hypothesis is that women tend to rely on men to find direction when they're with them. My friend who I traveled with for example seemed space out and have no idea where she was when she was with me (and she admitted this) but when we parted and explored separately, she seemed to have little trouble finding her way.
The person with the worst sense of direction I ever met though was a man. Dude would get lost trying to find a place he's been to several times before and was always late. It was really annoying. He destroyed my stereotype that women have a bad sense of direction.