Top 5 Mobile Applications for Travel

Here is the list of mobile apps used in my recent journey Kiev - Rome - Pompeii - Rome - Lviv - Kyiv. There was the 10 years child with me, so a trip plan had to be adjusted on the fly guided by Masha's health or mood. The applications for tourists are important because you won't be able to get free wi-fi and unlimited Internet anywhere during the journey.

My Тоp 5 Mobile Applications for Independent Travelers

5. Maps.me

maps.me off-line mode

Early I downloaded maps of the cities and regions planned to visit. Since that was downloaded the night before the trip (on my friend's advice) I didn't have enough time to learn all the features and settings. But that was important, especially if you had some indications of "geographical cretinism" like me.


One time in Rome we walked from the Vittorio Emanuele monument to the Termini train station following the maps.me instructions strictly. When we passed a quarter almost on the perimeter I realized that something was wrong and took a look at the screen again. It turned out we walked along the Car route.
Well, I switched to the Pedestrian tab. Anyway, we would be better to take a bus route 64.

I used Maps.me actively offline. In Pompeii, we went to shopping with it. The most important feature: it has brought us from the train station to the hotel in Pompeii in the late evening when the city was asleep.

4. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is the best in the 'where to eat' question.

In offline mode, I just paid attention to their green stickers with an owl on the restaurant's doors and went to lunch. It works! Sharing the lifehack with Masha was the way to look for the green stickers together. 

Sometimes being in a hotel with wi-fi, I was looking through the reviews for sightseeing. It would better to do at home when you had a plenty of time to plan the trip and Internet was unlimited.

TripAdvisor has only one drawback – it doesn't work offline.

3. Booking

booking.com

I had to dock several different bookings with the arrival time and transfers to and from the airport.

I rechecked the tickets and arrival date, again and again, looked through the hotels near the train station in case of a delay of the train or the plane.

Perspective to be with the child under the doors of the Italian hotel at night frightened me. Yes, there was an experience. Once we found ourselves in that position in Milan (without a child, just two adults).
 So the app really helped.

Booking has new hints, guides, but I can't remember what staff was used, what wasn't, – everything mixed up in my head. The application offers the same features as others do. Still, its main function is booking of hotels and it copes with it all 100%

2. Google.trips

Google.trips

Lovely app. Contains the planner of a tourist day, collects all the tickets and bookings in one place.

For example, you can choose among the ready-to- use sightseeing routes for a half-day.

"Things to do" can be filtered depending on your preferences: top spots, museums, modern art, food shops, local favorites, parks & gardens, religious art, indoors, outdoors, kid friendly, and so on.

The app includes useful tips: getting around by public transport, walking and biking, health and emergencies info, currency, shopping areas.

Sure Google Trip will be in the mobile application list for my next trip.

1. Google.maps

When I hit upon the idea to use that not only online mode but offline also, the life became easier. In Google.maps I like everything. It seemed to me that Google.maps consumes less charging the phone than maps.me, but it is based on the perception purely, no experiments were not conducted.

Google.Maps

The main value of the app for me is info about the local transport: routes, number and bus stop names.
You should know bus stop names because the most of the local people in buses and trams don't speak English. So you have to know which stop is the next to press the stop button in advance. 

Subway is much easier to cope for any tourist. The main thing doesn't be blunt at the turnstiles (to know where to put the ticket, where it pops up, and do not try to enter the subway with invalid ticket).

The 2nd day in Rome we would like to take a red touristic bus but looked a list of the stops and realized we had passed almost the entire route. So there was no point to take colored touristic buses. We didn't take taxis too. We saved the money.
Some of the routes are good now known to us and Masha could guide tourists during trips by buses, subway and trams in Rome.

As I understand the trend, every service providing independent travelers something i.e. tickets, hotels, maps, intends to develop its mobile app, so they will appear more and more cloning each other with similar features.

But competition brings benefit to consumers and we're ready to test new mobile applications during future trips!