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IN TRANSIT:IT USED TO BE that you'd have to ransack the house looking for your guidebook – which was probably already out of date the day it arrived in the bookshop – and still be printing out pages and pages of tourist information – which you'd then have to find room in your bags for – when you were supposed to be on your way to the airport.
All you need now is your smartphone and a few apps that will fill it with every piece of information you could ever want, and more besides, about the places you’re visiting.
Whether they’re designed for an iPhone, a BlackBerry or another top-of-the-range mobile, good travel-guide applications will carry robust independent reviews of local attractions, hotels and restaurants, among other places, and help you compare prices. As many of them update automatically, you should always have the latest details at your fingertips.
In the same drive to provide information, most major airlines now have their own apps, to keep you up to date with your flight details – Aer Lingus has one in the pipeline – and if you’re using trains or coaches abroad, most of the major operators also supply free, easily downloadable applications that will keep you informed about their routes, timetables and any changes to them.
Some apps are free, others cost €3 or €4, but don’t think the paid-for ones are always better than the free ones: in many cases they’re not.
Top of your list should be Wi-Fi Finder, a free app that shows you all the wireless internet connections in your immediate area, so your other applications can download updates, and so you can use e-mail and the internet – even Skype – without incurring a data roaming charge.
Anxious not to be left behind, a lot of established travel-guides companies have launched their own apps. Some of the better ones are from Lonely Planet, which sells 35 smartly written city guides for €7.99 or €12.99 on iTunes – and this week gave away its guides to 13 European cities, among them Barcelona, London, Paris and Rome, to help travellers stranded by the volcanic eruption in Iceland.
Travel apps can come from some less likely places, too, such as the high-fashion magazine Wallpaper*.
Between all the features about designers and interior decorators you’ll find its raved-about city guides, which are wittily written and stuffed with interesting pointers. They cost €2.99 each from iTunes.
If you’re travelling to multiple destinations and are in the market for cheap flights and even cheaper hotels, many swear by the free Kayak app.
And you can’t do without the Weather Channel’s apps – the basic one is free; you pay €2.99 for the Max version – which instantly check the weather in any number of locations.
When travelling around the city or wider area that you’re visiting, old-style maps can often never tell the full story: on the one hand they can lack the detail you need; on the other they don’t show as much of the city as you want to explore. Download the free Google Earth app, however, and you’ll get the full deal, from bars, restaurants and places of interest to satellite images of where you are. A warning, however: it can be addictive.
If you want to make a bit of an effort on the language front, try myLanguage Pro, which for €3.99 will aim to translate what you’re trying to say into any of 55 languages, from Spanish and Italian to Albanian, Estonian and Swahili. Even the free version offers 53 languages.
The more distant your destination the more likely you are to collide with a different set of cultural norms. With World Customs, which costs 79c on iTunes, you’ll be guided through some do’s and don’ts for where you are.
And don’t go without the virtually indispensable (and free) AroundMe. With this installed, all you have to do is point your phone ahead of you and the screen will flash up the names of nearby hotels, bars, restaurants, shops and more.
A word of caution about those roaming charges: using apps when you’re abroad can be pricey if you allow your phone to use a mobile network rather than Wi-Fi. Such was the roaming-charge rip-off that the EU had to limit the amount that mobile companies could charge you for using your phone around Continent. Vodafone and O2, for example, now offer fixed-price add-ons that allow you to download data abroad without coming home to a heart-stoppingly high bill. Tell your phone company where you’re travelling to, and for how long, so it can advise you about the best price plan for you before you leave.