Top Apps & Sites for Travel (Angie)

Travel Apps We Rely On

We didn't have much planned before we left Vancouver for our 9-month trip. So we've been planning and booking as we go. Here are the important apps and sites we've been using!

FLIGHT APPS

To watch for the best flight deals, I've used Hopper and Skyscanner. Admittedly, when we go to book, we don't usually click from there but rather try to book directly with the airline to get the best deals AND to make sure we really understand the luggage allowances! 

Tip: Skyscanner watches RyanAir discount flights in Europe, whereas Hopper does NOT seem to include that.

Of course to minimize our costs, we have also maximized our points from Avion and Aeroplan! Luckily, managed to use points for 3 big flights.

SHARED TRAVEL ITINERARY

Since we're both contributing to booking flights, trains, cars, accomodations and tours, we share it all with each other in TripIt. We use the free version, but it has been so great to keep track of all our bookings, dates, etc. This way, we can each see what has been booked for which dates, and see addresses for when we're ready to map our way there.

With a long 9-mo itinerary, it's also handy that each time you open the app, it jumps right to today's date and grays out all the bookings from the past.

Caution: Many tours who send confirmation emails don't seem to have them formatted in a way for TripIt to read it, so you end up having to manually enter those. 

ACCOMODATION APPS

To secure accomodations, I always searched each of these apps to get the best price! Being on a budget, yet needing things like the comfort of AC, proximity to towns, or in some places, kitchens, I used a combination of all of them to get what we wanted within our budget. 

Agoda 

Agoda was best for Asia, had the most hotel inventory and I got really used to the interface. Prices always shown in my currency (Canadian $), on a nightly basis; has filters for narrowing down my criteria. And there are also some apartment type listings here that were better deals (or more inventory of listings) than Airbnb. I used it so much I got VIP Platinum status with this app. 

Booking.com

Agoda is actually now owned by Booking.com but this site seemed to have more listings for Europe. So as we're now transitioning, more of our hotels and apartments are booked here. It took me awhile to get used to their default view of total booking price (rather than nightly).

AirBnB

What we love about booking and independently-owned home is that you get a little peek into the local life. It also helps give a sense of home while we're travelling, rather than the impersonal feeling of a hotel. In old towns, we stayed in old buildings, oftentimes without elevators, in admittedly sometimes sketchy entrances. Or in Japan, houses with tatami mats. I love seeing the contrast to the shiny newness and style of Vancouver.

Sometimes Agoda and Booking.com have these apartments, but we also ended up using quite a few AirBnBs, which were great deals. 

HomeExchange 

In addition to having our own primary residence rented out on AirBnB right now, we also participate in HomeExchange site. I have our primary, but also our Whistler townhouse listed there. Unlike what most people think, you do NOT have to do a reciprocal exchange... You can invite guests to your house and earn points, that you then spend to stay at other people's houses.

It's still ALOT more work to secure accomodations through this app, as you have to contact lots of owners in order to find that that will take your request. Some people put their primary home, and only vacation a specific few weeks a year, so you have to find a match. But it's worth it! It's also a warmer experience than AirBnB to stay in a local's home. We did HomeExchange in Cairns, Australia; and have some coming up in Budapest, Barcelona, Lisbon and Porto! 

HomeStay

I had wanted to do a few of these to REALLY get the feel of local living, but we only ended up doing it in Wayasewa Island, Fiji (which we found on AirBnB), and we have one coming up in Madrid. Using the HomeStay app, I found there were very few listings, and some of them were more like rentals, not homestays. 

Trusted HouseSitters

I had registered on this app, and thought we'd be able to do this more. Basically, take care of someone's pet(s) and house while they're away, and get free accomodation in exchange. Not all the cities we were going to, even had people using this. And every time I searched, our dates just didn't match up with the home/pet owners out there unfortunately. So we didn't use this at all. 

ON THE GO APPS

Currency Converter 

This was essential every time we went to a new country that has a new currency! After a day or so, we'd get used to converting new currencies into Canadian dollars in our heads, but in the beginning of each country, this was essential! 

Google Translate 

In the Balkans, most people we've encountered speak English really well. But in other countries, especially in cities where Uber and can drivers don't necessarily interact solely with tourists, or in small towns that don't get many tourists, having Google Translate was key. Using the voice and conversation mode was fun and did the trick! The camera mode came in handy at many restaurants, but often produced hilarious results!

Airalo

This is the first time I'd tried an eSIM (rather than SIM card for local mobile connectivity), and it worked like a charm in MOST countries. The only ones that it didn't work well in were Uzbekistan, North Cyprus, and Bosnia. We used a physical SIM in Jordan since we were driving in what we thought were remote places and wanted guaranteed best coverage!

Ground Transportation 

For getting around on the ground, we've used a combination of bus, subway, trains, ferries, rental car (Balkans and Jordan), and sometimes taxi, Uber or Grab (essential and cheap in Asia).

Each country has their own apps or websites and we rarely stayed long enough to get the hang of it or rely on it. The only place was Japan where we discovered Navitime Japan, which was a more reliable way to plan subway, bus and train routes than Google Maps or anything else. 

TOUR APPS

FreeTour and GuruWalk

Much to the chagrin of the kids, we've done our fair share of walking tours in cities. Usually historically oriented, sometimes more of a food or market bent. The best part about these is that you tip according to the value you get. We saw some backpackers tip nothing, but we always tipped something. But it could be $10 or 10 Euro per person (sometimes not including the kids if they didn't enjoy it, like the guides who drone on in too much detail about history).

And having done paid walking tours as well, I can say that the quality is NOT necessarily better on a paid one!

They're usually 1.5-2 hours and we generally see or learn new stuff that enhance our understanding and appreciation for the city!

ACTIVITIES AND TICKETS 

To find and book activities and other tours in some places, we sometimes used TripAdvisor, GetYourGuide or Klook if things were available there. In some countries, I found you had to buy online direct or just do it the old school way and buy in-person!

AllTrails

We're not a hard core hiking family, but we definitely seek this out. And we've done some amazing hikes that we navigated ourselves around by using AllTrails. Even in Uzbekistan when we did Chimgan Mountain, there were locals there from the city, who were surprised as they had hired a guide. 

Happy Planning and Happy Travels!