AE Favorite Travel Apps for iPhones

Top 10 Useful iPhone/iPad Apps for Traveling Abroad


1. Skype

You need to be connected to Wifi to use it, but a $10 Skype credit lasts a pretty long while. An hour long talk with someone in the states will typically cost around $.05. You can use it for face time calls or just plain old phone calls.

2. Currency

It's always nice to be able to quickly convert the bill from foreign currency into US dollars so you know how much you're spending. The good thing is you don't need a wifi connection for it to work after the first time you use it, it will just use the most recently updated exchange rate.

3. Lonely Planet Spanish

You should probably go through some of these phrases on the plane as a quick refresher for Spanish. It's also nice to have in your pocket if you completely blank on how to say something like, "Donde esta el bano?" This one costs $6 and it's worth it, but if you'd rather not shell out the coin there are plenty of decent free spanish phrase apps on the app store. Lonely Planet offers many additional languages.

4. Google Translate or iTranslate

Speak English into your phone and have your phone spit out the spanish - it's just like Star Trek. The only downside is you need a wifi connection for it to work.

5. Word Lens

This may be more of a novelty than it's actually a useful translation tool, but it's pretty amazing to hold your phone's camera up to a spanish language menu and see the words translated to English in real time!

6. The Weather Channel

It's always nice to have the forecast at your fingertips, no matter where you're traveling.

7. Yelp

Yelp is awesome when you're in unfamiliar territory. It's sort of like finding out about a great restaurant or cool bar by word of mouth - but in the modern way, where you don't have to actually interact with anyone.

8. WhatsApp Messenger
PingChat!
Textie (only one also built for iPad)

These are all free SMS like apps that are free if you're on Wifi. They're all cross platform apps so you can text people on different devices and different networks. They all work well.

9. FlightTrack (for ipad as well)
GateGuru

Track your flight in realtime, find your gate, departure info, find delays, rebooked your flight - it works pretty well most of the time.

10. Sit or Squat: Bathroom Finder

Last but not least, it is as advertised - a network to locate and rate good, clean, public restrooms all over the world.

BONUS: Best Photo Apps
Camera+
Hipstamatic
Instagram (also a social network for photos)

Most people with iPhones already have one of these apps. If you don't do yourself a favor and download one of them. Make your low res phone photos actually look good - by covering them in a layer of vintage camera effects.


NOTE: Major props to Pete McCoubrey for contributing to this list