12 Travel Apps That Can Save Time/Money/Sanity/Your Life

I am a latecomer to one of the world’s most spectacular inventions, Cuban café con leche, which is thicker, foamier, and creamier than … well, just about any coffee ever invented. It was love at first sip when I casually ordered one at Miami’s David’s Café in February, and a lifesaver during the final, bumpy days of my stay in Havana.  Yesterday I was thrilled to discover that California-based Peet’s coffee houses have introduced their own version, known as the Havana Cappuccino. Is that really worth blogging about? Yep. Because these days, it’s the simple pleasures that are keeping me going.

My barista, Adia, with this morning's Havana Cappuccino

What else am I doing? Mostly barreling down California freeways with Rich at the wheel, visiting hospitals, sick rooms, pharmacies, and high-end organic markets where I’m dispatched to find esoteric delicacies to tempt fickle palates. My phone is glued to my ear as I confer with insurance companies and out-of-town relatives. I’ve abandoned the civilized habits I acquired in Europe, a place where meals are leisurely and cars don’t even have cup holders. We’re gobbling snacks in the car and and wolfing down meals at random hours. This video is not actual footage from my life, but it sort of captures the spirit.
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Now, when I need to cheer myself up, I’m grabbing a Havana Cappuccino. And if I need to cheer Rich up, I talk about apps. As I may have mentioned in prior posts, Rich has something of a fixation — OK, an obsession — with apps. It started in 2013, when he bought an iPad for our 13-country railway adventure, and he’s been on a quest for the best travel techno-toys ever since. In times of stress, I can always turn his thoughts to a more cheerful direction by saying, “Tell me more about that new app…”
 
His latest fave is Booking Now, which we employed for the first time during our headlong dash from Palermo to California last week. Listing last-minute lodging deals, it enabled us to pay about half the going rate for a charming boutique hotel near the Rome airport. We often use the parent company, Booking.com, which has 900,000+ listings and 89 million reviews to help you choose wisely. 

Checking into our Booking Now hotel in Rome last week

For longer stays, we usually seek something homier from Airbnb, a peer-to-peer rental site that offers everything from a shared room (not that we’ll be doing that!) to an entire apartment (our usual choice) to a castle (maybe someday). We occasionally stay at hostels, when we can find one that offers a private room with it’s own bathroom, found via HostelBookers or Hostelworld. 
 
For researching destinations, we love Triposo, which sifts through millions of websites to find background information about practically the entire planet. Occasionally — and this just happened to us in Sardinia — we are thrilled to find ourselves in a spot so obscure even Triposo doesn’t know its details. We used to call this being out there, but now it’s going beyond Triposo.

The Gate of San Pancracio in Cagliari, Sardinia was definitely beyond Triposo.

Sadly, our old favorite train app, iRail, is no longer among the functional, but fortunately we can rely on Germany’s DB Navigator to show us railway timetables for most of Europe. We look forward to the day we find ourselves going beyond DB Navigator.
 
On long adventures, we keep a few folks back home apprised of our whereabouts via a private link on Track My Tour. Rich uses his iPhone to mark our locations and add notes about where we’re off to next; those entrusted with the link have sworn to keep an eye on our progress and, if we disappear, ride to the rescue.
 
For other kinds of emergencies, we have !Emergency!, which is the equivalent of an international 911 line. To help ourselves (or others) at the scene, we have the American Red Cross’s First Aid and Google's Translate, although it is my fervent hope that I never have to combine these, for instance attempting to apply a tourniquet while looking up the word “help” in Albanian. (For the record, it’s ndihmë.) XE Currency will let us calculate the medical bills, and to keep in practice, we use it often to figure out our bar tabs.

Today I learned there is an app for a Peet’s card, which would make it even easier to guzzle my new favorite coffee. But I’m not going to tell Rich about it. He’s already worried that I’m going too native here in my home state and might soon be living on tofu burgers, kale chips, and half-decaf Havana Cappuccinos made with low-fat soy milk. But if you have any other great travel apps, please send me the link and tell me about them! Rich will be absolutely thrilled...

Unlike some of my better-organized and more practical blogger friends, I do not accept sponsorships of any kind. All apps and other stuff I mention in my blog posts are there solely because I believe you might find them interesting and useful in planning your own adventures. 

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