Planning a trip can prove to be a real nightmare. Once you pick your destination, there are so many things to do that you sometimes feel overwhelmed. Find a cheap flight or a car to rent, book a room at a hotel or rent a house...and that's just the beginning. Once you get there, you have to see where to eat, what to visit, what outdoor activities are the most fun and what to do to make the most out of this trip. And a single thing like not being able to communicate to the people around you because of the language barrier can ruin your trip completely. But that doesn't mean you should give up traveling. Especially when there are so many apps that can make all these problems just magically disappear. And here are just 5 of them.
Kayak Mobile
What do you do first after picking a destination? Look up flights or car rentals, and hotels that are available at the time you plan to start your trip, right? Usually, at this point, you’d start surfing the web, searching through tons of pages only to end up with a headache and a piece of paper filled with flight routes, costs, dates and hotel locations. But with Kayak, you find all the information you need in one place. No matter where in the world you are, Kayak has the routes and prices for every airline, great deals for car rentals and all the details you need to know when booking a hotel. It's an all in one fantastic app that doesn't only provide you with the necessary information regarding all these aspects of your trip, but also allows you to book flights or hotels straight from the app. It's easy, safe and quick.
HomeAway
If you’re not settle for anything less than the comfort of your home even when you're away, there's an app to guarantee you this as well. Instead of picking a hotel where to spend your quiet evenings during your trip, why not rent an actual house? HomeAway provides you with all the information you need to find the perfect house to rent while you're away. With a list of more than 260,000 houses for rent, there's a good chance you'll find not a house, but a home, no matter what your trip destination is. Just select the city you're in or let HouseAway detect your location, and be amazed by the numerous houses you get to pick from. And with a single tap on the house you like, find all the details you need to be sure you make the right choice. Browse through photos, read reviews, find out all the house specifications and the availability. Simply bookmark the houses you like the most, and when you're all set, contact the owner via telephone or email.
TripAdvisor Offline City Guides
At this point, you're done with all the pre-trip details. But what do you do once you get there? Download TripAdvisor, of course. With TripAdvisor City Guides, you'll know more about the town you're visiting than the locals. From restaurant and hotel reviews to attractions, shopping locations and even free-self guided tours, you can find pretty much anything with TripAdvisor. And all you need to do to get the most of this app is select your destination from TripAdvisor City Guides list and download the extension. Once the download is over, check out the best restaurants, hotels, attractions, nightlife and shopping locations in the city or nearby. Check out guided tours. Learn more about the city. And create an account to share an opinion about all the things you taste, shop or visit.
Download TripAdvisor City Guides now
Oh Ranger! Park Finder
If you are, however, more interested in the outdoor activities, Oh Ranger! Park Finder helps you explore the most beautiful parks in the U.S. Select the city you're in and the Zip Code, and the app will find you all the parks near you. And for an even better search result, you can also select the activities you would like to do. Whether you like bird watching, fishing, horseback riding, or you're just looking for a place where to go bicking, have a picnic or play tennis, Oh Ranger! will find just the right parks, where you can do any or all of these activities. For every park your search generates, you get a description, directions, a park map, find out the activities you can do there, and a contact number, along with the park website address. And if you also want to share all this info with a friend, you can easily do it via Facebook, Twitter or Email straight from the app.
Download Oh Ranger Park Finder now
Image It
Now, you're all settled in, you know where to eat, what to visit, what outdoor activities to try out. Looks like everything is going to be just fine. That is until you get to a Cafe and leave with an allergy, because you didn't know how to explain to the waiter you're allergic to milk. You go to the pharmacy and don't know how to explain the person there what medicine you need. Whatever you do, there are some cases when the language barrier just hits you, when visiting a foreign country. But now you can use a fun app to help you put your words into images anybody can understand.
This is Image It, and it works like this: pick a topic you are trying to talk about, from Food and Transport, to more serious stuff like Health and Emergencies. For every topic you pick, a list of other subtopics will pop out on the screen. Choose the most appropriate subtopic, and using the visual symbols you are given, make up the best to transmit your message. For example, if you are looking for a fly spray, pick the picture of the fly from the list, the spray, press ok, and Image It will generate the appropriate image. Also, to make your message even clearer, you can also manually modify images. Image It might not be of much help when trying to have a conversation in a foreign language, but it will probably prove useful in solving the common communication issues when traveling.
So here you are. 5 apps meant to make your trip one to remember.
