During our first couple of trips around the world, we didn't have a smart phone, let alone any apps. But, these days, traveling with either a smart phone or a tablet is the norm, and those who do can download some pretty useful apps! Check out these five must-have travel apps:
Trail Wallet
This is the budgeting tool. We used this app on our recent trip to Cuba and are so glad that we found it prior to traveling there. With the internet situation in Cuba being less than ideal, we weren't able to get online to check out our banking balance. Luckily, we had this offline app, which kept track of all of our spending for us.
How it works is you enter the total amount of money you want to spend either per day, or for the duration of your trip. Each day, you input your expenses and categorize them into food, accommodation, transportation, etc. The app keeps track of how much you've spent throughout the day, which helps to make sure you don't blow your daily budget. And, at the end of your trip, you'll know what percentage of your budget went towards which categories. It's brilliant!
The majority of our budget in Cuba went to food.
XE Currency
Unless you're traveling within your own country, or a country that shares your currency, you'll need this handy app. It's hard enough to get used to new money - the denominations, the color, etc. - but having to then convert the cost of items from the local amount into your home currency can be a challenging task.
With the XE Currency app, all you need to do is enter in the amount, and within seconds, you'll have the conversion at your fingertips. If you have 3G or Wi-Fi access, the exchange will be current, but if you don't, the exchange will be based on the last time you were connected.
Google Translate
This is one incredible piece of technology, one that we just recently heard about. We've always used Google Translate from our desktop to help with our Spanish lessons and homework, but we didn't realize that there was an app for it as well.
With this app, people who don't speak English can speak into your phone/tablet and what they're saying will be translated for you! This feature is available in 90 languages. You can also type various languages for translation, or, you can hold your phone up to a word that you don't know, and it'll be translated (this feature is available in six languages). This app is genius!
Trip Verse
Trip Verse is a new app on the block and although it's still in beta stages, it's very useful. It can help you to plan and share your travel itineraries, and you can view your itineraries even while you're offline. Many restaurants and must-see sights are already programmed into the app via FourSquare, which makes planning easy. Addresses and maps are included for each destination as well. No longer do you need excel sheets and sticky notes, this app will store your details and itineraries for you.
Around Me
This has to be one of the coolest apps! It's very aptly named as well. What it does is finds things that are around you. If you're looking for a restaurant, hotel, mall, cinema, bar, ATM machine or bank, all you have to do is input that information into the app and it'll search for places that are the closest to you. What a time saver.
Are you into apps? Which ones do you find useful? Share with us below!
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