Useful phone apps for travelling

Useful phone apps for travelling

Hello everyone! Today, I'm doing a different kind of post. I am going to include it in my "advice when travelling" section, as I want to talk to you about the most interesting apps that I use when I am travelling. I have included apps which are suitable for both Android and iPhone operating systems. Also, the good thing about this post is that the apps are very varied, from apps which are useful for restaurants, to those for flights. Do you want to know which are which? Then let's start.

Mapify

This is one of my favourite apps. Whenever I go to a new place, unknown to me and where no-one I know has travelled before and I can't ask them for advice, I download and I use it a lot. It is a kind of online community for travellers. You could say that it is like an Instagram, but just for trips. Here, professional photographers upload their photos of the different places that they visit, give advice concerning them, and the most important thing: their location.

How many times have you seen a paradisical place but you don't know where it is? Well with this app, you can find out the exact location of each photo you see. Also, the best thing about this app is that you can search by location. So, if you are travelling to Germany, for example, to some natural park, you can put in the name of this same place, and all the photos that travellers and photographers have uploaded will appear.

Also, the majority of the photos are good-quality and Mapify users focus a lot on creating good content. It isn't like Instagram because when you search by location, you have to filter through lots of content to find what you are looking for; as lots of people include personal photos, or simply photos that aren't really to do with the location. There is a lot of spam. But with Mapify, this doesn't happen. I think it is a cool app if you like to discover new places, especially within nature.

Skyscanner

It may be that many people who read my blogs already know this app, as it has become very popular in recent years, but it would really surprise you the amount of people that I know that don't know that Skyscanner exists. For anyone who doesn't know, this is an app to buy cheap flights. It is really good because by choosing a home and destination airport, all of the flights appear, ordered by price and also all the different times. It is a lot simpler than going to the website for airlines and searching bit by bit. Really, you save so much time by using Skyscanner.

But without a doubt, my favourite option on this app is the one that lets you choose any trip. Let me explain. What I do to find cheap flights, is to put in my home airport. In my case, it is usually always Vienna. After, I don't select any specific destination airport, except for choosing "any location". I click search and all the countries and destinations that you can fly to from Vienna appear, ordered from the lowest to highest price. Thus, last summer I had four days free and as I didn't have any destination in mind, I used this app and I found return flights to Pisa for 45 euros, which is super cheap. When you don't have a fixed destination to go to, and also when you have the freedom to travel in terms of dates, Skyscanner is the most useful app out there. Also, you can filter by month and the cheapest month to fly to the destination you want to visit will appear. It has everything. I recommend it 100 per cent.

Happy Cow

When my friend showed me this app, I thought it was an excellent idea. Its main function is to show all the vegetarian and vegan restaurants in a city. Most of the time, when we use TripAdvisor, we have to filter to see the vegetarian restaurants but with Happy Cow there isn't a filter, as that is all it includes. Also, for every restaurant that appears on the app, there are also comments, opinions from different travellers that have tried these restaurants, and also photos that they have uploaded. This is its main function, but the truth is that it is a very well-rounded app, they have thought about everything. For example, they have a section where they show you different experiences that you can do on a trip, usually to do with nature, thus helping create more ecological and sustainable tourism. In addition to that, there are also articles about nutrition, they offer a section with the most vegan-friendly cities in the world, etc. It is really interesting. The truth is that this application can be used even when your not travelling, simply to discover new places in your own city and thus, minimizing and reducing meat and fish consumption. I think it is cool.

Booking and AirBnb

They are two excellent applications for reserving accommodation. Out of preference, the truth is that I prefer Booking because it is usually cheaper, but I always check both for good measure. It all depends on the destination. Normally, if it is a destination in the middle of nature, in the mountains, Airbnb is usually the better option. For everything else, Booking.

The good thing about booking is that you can save on all of your reservations with their links that offer you a discount code. Normally, what I do with my friends when we travel, is that I give someone a link with a discount code, which is usually worth 10 per cent off. If my friend uses my link, I receive 10 euros in my bank account, they usually take a while to give it to you, but in the end, they always do. In this way, if we add the 10 euros discount, plus the 10 per cent off, in the end we save a lot, especially if you are someone who travels a lot. Everything adds up and everything matters. We have done this numerous times, and in my case, I've already saved over 200 euros (you can see on your Booking account how much you have saved). Also, if you use Booking quite a lot, you will end up being a "genius" traveller, where the page will offer you discounts that other people won't receive on some accommodations. These are all pros!

As for Airbnb, it is good but you only receive a discount code for your first trip when you create the account, so saving money on your trips is more difficult. Also, what I don't like about this website is that, to the price that they show you for the accommodation at the end, they always add on cleaning costs and it is always more than you thought it would be. However, I have always had good experiences with the apartments that Airbnb offer.

Google Translate

This is a globally-known app. Despite the fact that there are hundreds of funny anecdotes surrounding this application, as being an automatic translator there are always errors; I have used it many times, especially now that I live in Slovakia. I have to say that translation from Slovakian - Spanish usually doesn't work well, therefore I always translate from Slovakian to English, which usually works better.

An option that I like about Google Translate is that you can use the photo option. You take a photo of the text that you want to translate, select it with a brush as if you were highlighting it, and it translates automatically. So, if it is a long text, you don't have to waste time writing it all out. This is an option that doesn't exist on the computer, but it is on the mobile version. I think that in certain contexts and knowing how to use this app, it is interesting to have it installed on your phone to get us out of a tight spot.

Public transport apps for each city

If you are going to do a long trip, I recommend researching the apps which exist for public transport in each city. The truth is that Google maps already has a function for this, but a lot of the time it doesn't work or the information is not complete. Normally, each big city will usually have their own.

For example, when I was in London for a month, I used CityMapper. The London Underground isn't that complicated, but with City Mapper you have every option there is. Also, I was there for a week in which there was an Underground strike, and I had to get around via train and bus, so this app really helped me out. The truth is that CityMapper is also available in other important European cities, but I only used it in London.

As for Bratislava, Google Maps usually works quite well, as it has all of the lines of buses and trams. However, saying this, IMHD. SK (couldn't have they given it an easier name? ) is an app that I used in my first few days in the Slovakian capital as when having to do various bureaucratic tasks and get around the city, it really came in handy. Thus, these apps are incredibly useful, especially if you are someone who is a bit inept or inexperienced, who doesn't know how to get around using public transport.

Windy Maps

I have talked to you about this app in a superficial way in some past post about Azores. Windy Maps is designed for adventurers who usually are in contact with nature in their trips, for people that hike. Normally, everyone uses Google Maps, but when you want to go to sites which are hard to access, Google Maps can fall short as not all of the routes appear and, a lot of the time, the routes are incorrect. It has happened to me many times that the route is incomplete, that there is no longer a path to follow and I have to go back on myself.

I was in Azores when I discovered this application and honestly, it is really useful. All the routes that are there appear, along with the comments from travellers and interesting points, as well as data which indicates the altitude of each place, really useful if you are walking in the mountains. The only negative that I've seen about this application, is that normally you have to download the maps for an area, and it is better to do this in advance. When I went to Tirol, I downloaded all of the maps to be able to use them, and being quite a large terrain, it took quite a long time, but finally, I could use them and it was really useful. Saying that, once you have downloaded them, they work offline, even if you indicate the exact point where you are and as you move, the indicator will move too. It is incredible. In conclusion, if you like walking, exploring and discovering new places, you should install Windy Maps on your phone.

Splitwise

This app is ideal for when I travel with a lot of people. Anyone who has travelled with a big group of people, knows that at the time of working out the costs, it is a brawl. So if I paid for the petrol, you have paid for the restaurant, I paid for the hotel three weeks ago, the other has spent 5 euros on the parking, the other paid for the coffees, etc. It is a drag, so that is why Splitwise is there to solve all these problems. In this app, every person puts down what they have spent and the calculations are done separately. In the end, you can see what you owe to each person and all you have to do is the final transfer. In conclusion, this app is perfect for group trips.

And these are all the apps that I wanted to show you. I hope that this has been useful for you and that you use them in the future, I'm sure that you will, as they touch lots of different points of things that you will need on one of your trips. And that is the post for today. Thank you for reading this post, and I'll see you soon for more content about my travels.

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