Transcription
Hey there, fellow travelers. Mark here with Walters World. Today, we're going to talk about your phone when it comes to travel and specifically, what are the best travel apps you should have on your phone to have the best vacation possible. All right.
And so, let's start off with not getting lost. Okay? And so, the first app I recommend you download is Maps.me. And what you want to do when you get Maps.me, they give you a few free maps to start off. Download the map for the city you're going to go to because maybe you don't have connection. Maybe you're in a basement bar that doesn't have internet service. It has everything in there. It'll have the sites that are there. It has all the streets that are in there. And it really is a fantastic resource to find your way around. Whether you're driving, walking, taking the train, whatever, Maps.me is a great one.
But even if you don't do Maps.me, if you just are a Google Maps person, I would recommend you download the offline map for the city you're going to go to, in case maybe you don't have data or something's not working, but it will at least track you cuz your GPS still follows you. And having that offline map makes it a lot easier when you're thinking, "How do I get from here to Vavo Hill?" I'm not really sure and I don't have a connection. Something's going wrong. It'll be there for you. Okay, so that's one of the things, Maps.me, or even if you just have Google Maps, just so you have like to have the offline maps, that's going to be super helpful.
Okay, now if you're going to drive, I recommend Waze because you have Google Maps which gives you driving instructions, but I feel that Waze does a better job of updating whether it comes to traffic, whether it comes for like local like intersections and and roundabouts. I think that's a better one to have than Google Maps. Google Maps is fine, but Waze, I feel, is a better like driving map. If you're going to be using that for your GPS kind of stuff, they're throw that one there.
Now, if you're going to be going to countries where you don't speak the language, my next thing for you to download, it's not a Babel. It's not a language learning app. It is Google Translate. Like literally with Google Translate, you can literally like point your camera at the menu and it will literally translate it on your screen like right there. And the important thing is before you leave, what you want to do is download the language, the country you're going to. I'm here in Poland, so I downloaded the Poland dictionary. So, when I go through, it tells me all the food stuff and all the other things and the rules for the hotel. It's all right in there. Okay. So, Google Translate, fantastic. But make sure you download the language of the country you're going to go to. So, it's there. If you're going to be online, you don't have to. But if you download it already there, it works a lot faster.
Now, if you're going to be flying, next thing you want on your phone is the airline app. You may say, "Well, Mark, I've already printed off my tickets. Why do I need the app?" The thing is, the app will notify you if there's a change in the gate, if there's a delay, how long that delay is. If you need, if your let's say your flight gets cancelled, you don't have to wait in the 900 person line at the airport. You can change your flight stuff right on the app. So that makes it a much more advantageous app to have cuz it can be very helpful. Also, a lot of them now will actually track your bags so you know where your bags are. So you have that kind of peace of mind. So whether it's Delta or Ryanair, EasyJet, always have that app on there. And also bonus, always sign up for their rewards programs just in case because when you're a member, you're less likely to be that person that gets kicked off the plane if and when they oversell the plane. Okay, so there is that.
Now, next up, if you're going to be taking the train or the bus, whatever company you're going to use, download that app. For example, if I'm in Germany, I have the Bahn.de app, and that's the local train company. So on there, I have my tickets on there. I can look at all the train timetables on there. All of it's right there. If I'm like, "Oh, maybe do we have time to do a day trip to Nuremberg?" Oh, I can look on there and it gives me the schedule, all kinds of stuff. So, I would definitely have it on there. Also, it saves your tickets, your seat reservations. Super nice. If you're taking the bus, like FlixBus, you can have the FlixBus app on there. Has your bus tickets on there, your schedules, lets you know where the stops are, so you have an idea. So, those can be helpful to have. So, make sure you have your transportation app on there.
Okay. Now, if you're going to be staying at hotels and the hotels, like if you're going to stay at like Marriotts or Hiltons, yes, download the Hilton app, download the Marriott app, download the Riu app, whichever one it is, because when you have that there, again, sometimes they let you have your key on your phone, so you can just use your phone to sign in, check in, check out, makes life so much easier. But also, a lot of times they'll have extra information like, "Oh, here's some day trips you can do. Here's some of our concierge service. Oh, if you need to talk to us, you can text us versus trying to call if you're not sure if you speak the language. They can translate for you." So that can be really helpful. So the hotel app.
Now, another one, if you're going to go to a city that has a lot of public transportation like New York City or London, I do recommend Citymapper because Citymapper is very good for making sure that you get all the right like subway lines and metro and tube lines and buses, all those things kind of connected together in real time. So you know if there are delays or if it's, you know, [clears throat] replacement bus service kind of things instead, you can plan around that. So that's very helpful.
Now, another one that can be helpful, especially if you're not sure and you're going to go to a lot of different countries at a lot of different currencies, XE Currency, some kind of currency exchange thing, which gives you the up-to-date, you know, currency rates. So, you kind of know, "What am I spending here?" Like here, I'm here in Poland now. What is it? Is it? Oh, it's like a little bit less than four to what? Okay, I have a rough idea on prices. So, I'm not just paying without thinking. It's all right there. And this is one I've used a lot. We were doing a lot of traveling in Africa, in South America to kind of keep up, like, "Wait, what what are we spending now? How much is this worth?" to give a better idea of what I'm spending. Helps to control your costs too. Knowing what that exchange rate is. Also helps you when you go to the ATM and they offer the conversion. You're like, "Ooh, that is a horrible exchange rate. No, I will decline the conversion and just take the money in the local currency."
Now, a communication app that you have to have when you travel anywhere in the world is WhatsApp. Like honestly, if you're only going to get one app on your phone, get WhatsApp. Because WhatsApp, what it lets you do, it lets you basically text from your phone to any number in the world and you don't get charged those international rates about texting to Poland because it's on WhatsApp. And we've traveled in South America, we've traveled in Africa and WhatsApp was literally the default connection to our guides, to our tour companies, to our hotels. So, you want to have WhatsApp on there. And what's cool is you make friends around the world. You get their phone number in there and you can just text them that way without spending anything extra. So, it actually helps you keep those friends you've made around the world. So, that's why I really like WhatsApp.
Now, another thing I recommend you download is Dropbox. And what you want to do is you want to sign up for Dropbox. And it gives you basically it's a storage. It's a cloud storage service. You might have iCloud or you might have the Microsoft version of, if you have one of those, it's fine. But you want to have some kind of Dropbox kind of thing where you can have your photo dumps because if you're going around, hey, I don't want to lose my pictures. What if my, what if my phone gets stolen? What if my camera breaks? What if somebody takes it? This way you can have it all there and it's saved in the cloud. It's already backed up for you. And another thing that's cool is sometimes you're taking all these pictures, all these videos, and you forget to clean off your phone before you go. You can back up those things and then clean off space so you can take more pictures and more videos when you're traveling around. So I use Dropbox, and that's what I like.
And then there's the VPN. Now, you know, if I say VPN, there must be an ad for a VPN service or not. But the thing is, if you're going to be doing any kind of transactions on like monetary transactions online, you want to check your stocks portfolio, these kind of things, a VPN, virtual private network is pretty good in order to keep your information private. So, it might be something you want to look into if you're going to be doing any kind of business dealings or anything while you're traveling. It's one of those things. I've actually worked at places that were required to have a VPN when we traveled, even in our own country, to keep our data private. So, do be aware of that. That is something because people do steal your data when you are going around. So, be aware of it.
So maybe you want to have a VPN. Or let's say there's a pre-order for something you want to get back home and if you go on like ESPN. If I go to ESPN in the Netherlands, I get ESPN the Netherlands. I cannot get ESPN USA. So I want to see the ES Sports stuff in the US. I have to use a VPN to say I'm in the US to see the news in the US. So something to kind of think about when you're there. Or maybe a Netflix show that's not on Netflix Poland. You might want that VPN to get in the US so you can see your favorite Netflix USA show.
So, those are the apps that I recommend for you to have on your phone. Little bonus phone tip, when you have your boarding pass on your phone, screen cap it because probably when you're at the airport is when the app decides it needs to reboot or there's no internet connection, so it's good if you have that screen cap of your boarding pass.
Anyway, I wish you all the best. What are the apps you put on your phone? Because I know there's lots of games you could put on there and all kinds of stuff, but honestly, what are your kind of go-to things to have on your phone? Because another thing I have is YouTube. YouTube and I have YouTube Premium. So, I actually will download videos about places I'm going so I can watch the videos when I'm on the train to get more excited about the destination I'm going to. Anyway, wish you all the best. I'll say bye from here in Krakow.