Trip Viewer (right) is a great new iPad app to use in conjunction with the Trip Journal 6.1 app for iPhone. Trip Journal allows you to track, document, and record your travel experiences, personalize them with notes, photos, and videos, and share them with your friends.  Now, with Trip Viewer, you can export those experiences to an iPad, view your stopping-off points overlaid on a map, and enrich the whole experience with real-time locations and photos for the richest, most complete record of your travels you could possibly imagine.

iTranslate makes you instantly fluent in more than 50 languages. Just speak an English word into your phone and iTranslate will show it to you in the language of your choice. Spoken voice translations are also available in 18 languages so that you can have an actual conversation anywhere in the world. Trying to give a cab driver directions? Looking for a restroom? Lost your way to the hotel, restaurant, shop, or museum you were looking for? Can’t find anyone to ask who speaks English. No worry! iTranslate will do the translating for you. [Read more →]

Hopstop: Even though I live in New York City, I don’t always know the best route to take so one of the apps I have used is Hopstop to get me to my destination the quickest, most convenient way possible. Now the Hopstop iPhone app will get you where you want to go in 62 major cities (with more being added every month) throughout the United States and Canada, as well as Paris and London.

You choose your preferred mode of transportation, key in your current location and where you want to go, and Hopstop provides step-by-step, accurate directions, including the length of time it will take you to get to each stop on your route and to your final destination.

Presselite has developed three essential guides for navigating underground in the New York City subways, the London Underground, and the Paris Metro. No more standing there trying to peer at maps when you’re in the station. Now you can map your route before you set out and carry it with you for reference along the way. New York City, Paris, and London

Google’s Mobile Map: This app has saved me more than once. Its even like a GPS when you are lost, like when I had printed directions to my brothers house but I took a wrong turn and didn’t know where I was! So I typed in my “end point” and the miraculous app found my present location (via cell phone) and I was then provided concise, correct directions. This app also provides directions for walking and for public transportation.

Get Taxi, This app launched initially in Israel, is now available in London and will soon be coming to Moscow, Paris, and other cities in Europe. No more queuing or wonder where to get a cab. Now you can order a taxi directly from your phone, which locates you via GPS and dispatches the cab closest to you. You can also get the driver’s name, license number, mobile phone number, and the car’s estimated arrival time, all while you track it’s progress in real time on a map—and then pay with a credit card if you wish.

Wallpaper City Guides: Ten of the most popular Wallpaper City Guides (for Amsterdam, Barcelona, Brazil, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Paris, Rome, and Tokyo) are now available as iPhone apps. The guides’ editors work with correspondents who actually live in the cities they write about so that you can be sure the information they provide is the most up-to-date and accurate there is. I’ve always enjoyed the Wallpaper travel guides, and I especially I love having the convenience of having all this great info on my phone instead of in my luggage!

Lake Como: Just as it sounds, is the complete guide to the most luxurious hotels, restaurants, spas, golf clubs, shops, beaches, and ski resorts in one of the world’s most luxurious vacation destinations. Lake Como has been called the jewel of Italy, and now there’s a jewel of an app to help you discover every one of its most glittering treasures.

Monaco Travel Guide:, As the description puts it, allows you to “hold the very best of [this renowned playground of the rich and famous] in your hands.”  Find the best hotels and restaurants, and learn about the Principality’s historic sights, luxurious shops, exciting nightlife, stunning architecture and more, all illustrated with beautiful full-color images.

If “be prepared” hasn’t already become the traveler’s motto, if probably should!

Here are a few of the latest iPhone apps that will help you to prepare so that your trip is as hassle-free and enjoyable as possible.

My TSA Version 1.2 offers up-to-date, 24/7 information on the current operating status of U.S, airports as well as the most recent rules for what is allowed in carry-on and checked baggage, ID requirements, and tips for how to pack and what to wear in order to speed your way through security.

Hipmunk (above) takes the time-consuming frustration out of booking your flight. Once you know where you’re going just enter your departure and destination points and hipmunk provides a visual grid of  carriers, flight departure times, cost of the ticket, arrival time, and number of stops, if any. It’s all right there, all on one screen, and you can even book your ticket immediately from your phone if you choose. This is the ultimate in one-stop airline ticket shopping.

Gate Guru is your complete guide to 85 airports throughout the U.S. Where are the gates, the security checkpoints, restrooms, the executive lounges, the shops, the ATMS, the best places to get something to eat? Gate Guru will tell you. The app provides maps and guides to the various terminals in each airport as well as listing current wait times at the various checkpoints, departure and arrival times, and much more. Also available for the Android phone. [Read more →]

1.     American Express Travel App

Includes Tripit, the travel organizer. Just forward confirmation e-mails to your phone and Tripit will create your itinerary. You’ll also be able to view restaurants and shops near your airport gate, access a directory of travel providers, and more. Platinum card members will also receive alerts to flight delays or cancellations and gate changes, information about alternate flight availability, and the location of airport lounges available to them.

2.    Currency

Provides instant, up-to-date exchange rates for more than 100 currencies and countries, and you can see several of your personal choice on the same screen simultaneously.

3.     Zinio

Get all your favorite magazines delivered directly to your phone so that you don’t have to carry them with you or buy hard copies at exorbitant prices abroad (if you can find them). Resize the type, bookmark and share, or download articles to read offline later. [Read more →]

With over 300,000 apps created this year alone, if you have a smartphone and are travelling abroad there’s plenty of great mobile apps to choose from to help keep all your holiday plans on schedule.

Whether you are travelling solo or are planning a package holiday with the family, our selection of 10 of the best apps available will help with everything from planning your trip, how to tip and even sending an ‘iPostcard’ to your friends and family!

TRIP PLANNING

These apps are all designed to help you plan your trip and make sure you’ve got everything you need for your package holiday.

First up is Packing Pro. Worried that you might pack the sunscreen but forget the passports? Packing Pro lets you create a list of everything you’re planning to take on holiday and a tick function so you can check that everything’s where it should be! Available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, Packing Pro requires iOS 3.0 or later. Packing Pro has been chosen by National Geographic and American Express as one of their best iPhone apps for travellers and is currently available for $2.99.

TripIt is a handy app that puts all your travel plans right on your iPhone no matter where you booked your excursions or trips. You can forward travel confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com to build a trip itinerary, so you know exactly where you should be all through your holiday. Ideal for package holidays with excursions as additional extras, TripIt is available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and it’s free!

Travel Buddy is a great app that is practically a travel agent in an app! This free app can be used on any mobile phone and can provide you with local information, send texts to your phone confirming your booking, itinerary, flight information and even weather reports. Additional information texts are charged at £2 plus your standard network charge.

GUIDES

[Read more →]

Sure, the brochure looks great, and the Web site makes it seem very appealing, but those are marketing tools, designed to show any hotel, resort, or destination location in the best possible light.

Now, with Google Street View you can see for yourself what the place your considering really looks like, in addition to whether it’s really “right on the beach”  or “close to the best shopping in town” or “within walking distance” of the trendiest restaurants.

Just go to Google Maps, click on Street View, and type in the location you want to see. Zoom in, zoom out, look up, look down, and scroll to take a virtual tour of just about any place in the world.

Many people keep returning to the same location because at least they know what they’re going to get for their vacation dollar. How boring! Now you can go someplace new with the same confidence you have in the ones you’ve found tried and true.

New York City is a Mecca for travelers from all over the world, but the Big Apple can be overwhelming and intimidating, and if you don’t have a “native” to guide you, you could miss out on some of the best and most unusual opportunities it has to offer.

Who better to give you the scoop than the experts at The New York Times? “The Scoop” is available as an iPhone app or on the Web. Use it to direct you to Times’ restaurant critic Sam Sifton’s 50 favorite eateries, dining editor Pete Wells’s favorite bars, or to unique opportunities for things you can do and see only in New York.

From the dog run in Washington Square Park to jazz at the venerable Village Vanguard, the Tenement Museum on the lower East Side to the food halls at Grand Central Terminal, there are sights, sounds, and tastes you’d probably never find in the average guidebook. And The Scoop also includes maps showing the locations of every recommended destination.

No more wandering around hoping to bump into something that interests or intrigues you. Now you’ll always know where you’re going so that you don’t waste precious time and never miss a trick.

These durable, laminated, fold-out pocket maps have been completely indispensable to me in my travels. They’re brilliantly designed, easy to read, extremely accurate, and available for so many cities and regions across the USA and throughout the world that it would be impossible to list them all here.

In addition to the city and regional maps, which are indexed to special sites, restaurants, shops, hotels, transportation, parks, and more, there are also specialized metro and museum maps of major cities. Carrying a Streetwise Map is almost like having a reliable, compact guidebook in your possession at all times.

I have at least six of them and use the one for New York City, even though I live there, whenever I’m looking for a particular destination in an unfamiliar part of town. You can buy them online, but they’re also widely available at hotels, newsstands, and other outlets.

While e-books are gaining in popularity, there’s still nothing like a well-stocked bookstore, especially one that’s dedicated to a particular subject matter or market.

Whether you have a trip planned or you’ve just returned from someplace you loved, you may want to read more about it—either to educate yourself, get in the mood, learn a language, or simply as a reminder of the great experiences you had. If so, Idlewild Books is for you. Located at 19^th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, or online at www.idlewildbooks.com, it carries all kinds of books—from novels to memoirs to cookbooks to travel guides, and even children’s books—about almost anyplace in the world.

If you’ve fallen in love with France, for example, you might want to read Julia Child’s My Life in France to discover what made her fall in love with it on first sight. Or if you’re setting out for Spain, reading Hemingway’s classic The Sun Also Rises will surely make you yearn to see Pamplona. And Idlewild even offers language courses in French, Italian, and Spanish right in the shop.