Throughout the times my family and I have been on trips we have enjoyed many activities, eateries, and gorgeous scenery. This is not to say it goes without research and in-depth evaluation of places and activities before we go. However, a big on the go adaptation we have made is using important apps to help us get places, make daily changes to a restaurant reservation, see a currency change, and keep up-to-date information about our flights.
Without using these apps, our vacations might look a lot different; including wasting time trying to figure things out instead of doing them. Each of these apps have improved our trips and are super easy to use for any person. I am thankful to have found these apps every traveler should have and glad to share with you!
Airline Apps: Obviously when flying with any airline you definitely want to have their app downloaded. It ensures that all updates about your flight are notifying you as soon as possible, allows you to use on-board wifi (if provided by the airline), and some apps even have downloadable movies or tv shows once you input your flight information. Another benefit is the easy access to your flight ticket and ability to save it to your Apple Wallet (which I find helpful in case the internet becomes slow when boarding a flight).
Hopper: My cousin showed me this app to help track flights for my upcoming spring break trip when they were super expensive. This app allows you to input flights, stays, or cars and track the price changes over time, also notifying you when they drop a significant amount. On top of this huge benefit of tracking flights, this app provides ways to earn rewards and find deals about places you are traveling. When looking at the deals page, it shows a wide variety of locations that have percentages off their stays for a limited time. This app helped me save so much money on my flight to Punta Cana and I will be using it in the future.
Lyft/Uber: Wow, life has changed since these apps were made. This is an obvious requirement of an app to have downloaded for anywhere you are going. I always have both downloaded on my phone for use anywhere, but mostly to compare prices because sometimes Lyft can be quicker and cheaper in a busy city. The only downside of Lyft it that it is only available in Canada and the United States, whereas Uber can be used in 68 countries around the world.
Waze: Waze is an absolute life saver when it comes to avoiding traffic and getting places faster. I use this app almost weekly, for when I have to go somewhere and I don’t known the way. It tracks cops which is a huge bonus of the app and it makes sure that if there is traffic ahead you know in advance, while it tries to find a better route for you to take. This app has helped make driving so much more pleasant when having a long drive. If you do not have this app on your phone you need to download it asap.
Maps: I love using the Apple Maps app when walking around cities to get from place to place. I feel that this app is super easy to operate, by zooming in-and-out, seeing which direction you’re walking based on the blue highlight, and searching for places you need to go. When I go to New York City and need to get from a restaurant to a store or Bryant Park to a broadway show I always use this app to walk around. Without this app I would definitely get lost from time to time.
Citymapper: This app was life changing when my family and I went to Europe last summer. When we got to London we were planning to use to the bus system to get around since it was cheaper than an Uber/Lyft everywhere, but we couldn’t figure it out at first. This app was the only way we figured out where we needed to go for the bus stop in the right direction. Not only does it have bus stops in multiple cities, but it provides walking directions, bikes, subways, rail rides, and more options of traveling. I highly recommend this app when traveling to a foreign country and planning to get around yourself.
Currency: This app is super basic and simple to use. You just pick the currencies in which you want to operate within and input the price. The app then shows the price of the foreign currency in terms of your usual currency, making it easier to determine how expensive things are in other countries.
Expensify: I have used this app many times on mini trips with friends to track all my spendings. It’s super helpful to get an overview of what you have spent so far on your trip and if you have a budget, how much left you have to spend. Not only can you use it to track spendings, but Expensify can automatically import receipt details so that if you loose them after the trip you are still able to get their information. You can categorize, tag, and group expenses so that it is easier to sort through or look at after the trip.
Wanderlog: Wanderlog is one of my favorite travel apps I have been using over the years. It is the ultimate planning app to outline your trip with times, reservations, locations, traveling plans, and more. If you choose to pay for the plan you can get the outline of your trip offline when you need to, but I have never had problems using it online anywhere I have gone. Before we leave for our trip, I input our entire itinerary into this app so that I don’t need to print out any papers and carry those around, and I have the information with us when we leave the hotel/Airbnb.
Visited: If you like to track where you have been over the years and create a wish list of where you want to go this is a great app. Visited inputs pins every time you add a location to your been places, want to go places, and lived places. It color codes everything so when you view from a far you are able to see what you have accomplished. And it also takes your travel goal and makes it into a percentage, showing you how much of your goal you have accomplished so far.
Yelp: My mom has been using Yelp for years since it was released, to research food places and leave reviews. Considering a majority of our vacations are planned off research and reviews people have left, it is important to us that if something is worth while we make sure people know it is. Just as if something is not worth the time for someone to spend on their vacation I like to make sure people know so as to not waste their time. Yelp is a great way to find out what people think about restaurants and activities before booking things for your trip.
