Anna is a co-founder of Adventure in You and has been traveling the world for the last 9 years. She has spent time living in Thailand, Mexico, Indonesia, and Spain and is our local expert in these areas. Her expertise on travel, gear, and building businesses have been featured on Foundr, Business Insider, Yahoo Travel, and more.
Our wide world is a vast and diverse place, brimming with culture, various cuisines and distinct languages. Whether you’re a veteran traveller with many trips under your belt or a daring beginner planning their first excursion, there are many things you can do to prepare for your upcoming set of travel plans.
Every year, we love doing website and app roundups featuring the best resources to help make traveling easier. With the rise of technology, you can easily make arrangement for virtually anything that you want.
From accommodation, food, to activities, your computers or mobile devices can become a one-stop-shop for travel planning. To help you make the most of all the best travel resources out there, here’s a quick list of apps and websites ready for use that make travel abroad just that little bit easier.
Whip out that app store and grab a hold of this one quick. Google translate is exactly what it says on the tin, and whilst you might be used to using it on a desktop computer at home or in the office, it’s now available in app form across multiple devices. With access to your camera, it can convert menus, street signs, maps and instructions with relative ease.
If you grant access to your microphone, it can translate sentences for you. With the simple typing function, you’ll be going back and forth between English and your country of travels first language in no time.
We used this app quite a bit during our travels in France and believe me, it definitely came in handy, especially when looking at menus and street signs.
Using the download function, you don’t even need access to the internet, as the translation files will be kept right on your device. And best of all, it’s completely free.
Deliveroo
Food. Foreign food. Delicious, exciting, extravagant new flavors. While street food is usually our go-to when traveling, sometimes there’s nothing better than vegging out with local food in the comforts of your hotel.
So you’re not short of options, you can opt to check out platforms like Deliveroo which can help you by listing all the various restaurants and cafes in nearby areas. Find yourself with a sweet tooth craving in Singapore? No worries. Want to order a Thai Green Curry to the hostel? Can do.
Accommodation Booking Platforms
Nowadays, we always make sure to book our accommodations in advance. Gone are the days where we would wander around looking for a place to stay. Instead, we usually just choose a spot and bust out our favorite booking platforms like Booking, Agoda, or Hostel World.
We then pick a location and browse away the options – with a variety of price points there’s something for everyone, and it can certainly be easier than trawling the web yourself for the best offers and deals.
I usually do this a few days before I am set to arrive in a place in case of any plan changes. This for me is the ideal way to travel, giving us both the freedom and flexibility when traveling. If you want other options on how to save money on accommodations, check out these other websites for budget travelers.
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Most banks these days have incorporated contactless payment into their services, and depending on your destination this can be an invaluable tool to have available. Accessible either through your debit card or apps like Apple or Android Pay, you can be sure to have cash on hand regardless of the situation.
We personally have been using Revolut and LOVE the technology behind it. When we were living in Bali, ATM card skimming was rather popular so we would only transfer the amount that we needed to the card and would immediately de-activate the card when we weren’t using it.
If you’re not comfortable with this brand of technology, simple online banking, and processing applications are an alternative, helping you to check your balance and manage money wherever there’s a Wi-Fi connection. If you want a detailed review of the app, check out this Revolut review.
Although I am a big Google Maps fan, Maps.me is a great alternatively, especially because you can use most of it offline. I first started using Maps.me during my very first backpacking trip to Europe.
It has saved me countless hours of walking around and getting lost.
All you have to do is download the local map as soon as you get to a place and you can track where you are using your mobile phone’s GPS tracker, regardless if you have wifi or not.
Rome2rio
Whenever I’m trying to find how to get from point A to point B, I always go on to Rome2rio. It’s a great app (or website) which can tell you all the various routes that you can take. Although I almost always take the buses and trains due to the price point, I often use Rome2rio to compare the price against flights and sometimes, you will definitely be surprised at the awesome deals that you can find.
Listing all the ways to get to a place using public transport, I can then make the best decision on what type of transport to get to a certain place. This feature comes incredibly handy when trying to visit off-the-beaten-track destinations and towns.
So there you have it! As you can see, it really doesn’t have to be so difficult. These are just a few apps and websites that make travel a lot easier and more accessible. How about you? What are your favorite go-to apps when traveling?
