Travel Sites & Apps

Online Travel Resources

The most useful websites and mobile apps for planning a Trip to Europe,

and the best websites and apps

for making the most of your trip to Europe while abroad

WEBSITES:

Trip Preparation:

·      http://www.enjoy-europe.com - an extremely comprehensive website offering very detailed and practical advice on the process of travel to Europe, including chapters on electricity, clothing, money, packing, and a dozen other useful topics.  Well-written and maintained by a long-time traveler who has lived and traveled extensively in Europe.

·      http://www.nomadicmatt.com - this guy is now a professional travel writer, but he started out as a simple guy with wanderlust and parlayed that into a career.  Great travel tips and resources.

·      http://www.onebag.com - a detailed site devoted to the art of packing – what to pack, how to pack, and what to pack it all into.

Travel Advice and Reviews:

·      http://www.tripadvisor.com - user-generated reviews of just about every hotel and attraction on the planet.  Very useful to get a good feel for the location and quality of a hotel, and the worthiness of a venue.  Also features travel guides (some professionally-written) and extras.  You can sign-up for periodic email updates which summarize attractions and hotels in a city you are planning to visit.

·      http://www.virtualtourist.com - similar in concept to TripAdvisor, but not as large.

·      http://www.travbuddy.com - smaller than TripAdvisor and VirtualTourist, Travbuddy also features access to user travel blogs, which can be kind of neat.

·      http://www.lonelyplanet.com - the online version of the print guides, but with a lot of free content and user reviews.

Travel Booking Sites:

·      http://www.kayak.com - my favorite booking site for flights and hotels.  Kayak searches dozens of other sites and compiles the best rates and fares found.  Also, with a free membership, you can email your booking receipts to Kayak and the site will automatically create a chronological itinerary for you that you can email, print, or access from anywhere in the world by computer or through Kayak’s handy mobile app.  The itinerary also stores copies of your email booking confirmations for easy reference.  Kayak.com doesn’t search EVERY other travel site, so you should consider some double-checks.  This is especially true with hotels, where you can sometimes find a better rate by calling the hotel’s front-desk directly.  I would have separately listed http://www.booking.com for hotel bookings, but Kayak.com and Booking.com are joining forces via merger and you can access Booking.com’s resources via Kayak.

Trains:

·      http://www.bahn.com – Deutsche Bahn – great resource for train timetables for all of Europe, though you can only purchase tickets for German trains on the site.  Probably the easiest to use of all of the national rail websites in Europe.

·      http://www.raileurope.com - this is the place to research and buy Eurail passes; you can also book European train tickets and look up timetables.

·      http://www.nationalrail.co.uk - search timetables and buy tickets on any of the privatized rail companies in the United Kingdom.

·      http://www.britrail.com - Eurail passes aren’t valid in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  If you plan an extensive rail journey in the UK, this is the site to research and purchase the Britrail pass, similar in concept to the Eurail pass.

·      http://www.seat61.com - a great European train travel website run by a former European rail executive.  Explains the complexities of European train fares and schedules in an easy-to-understand way.  Very comprehensive.

APPS:  (Note: all hyperlinks below are to the Apple iTunes App Store)

Travel Advice and Reviews Apps:

·      TripAdvisor – read and write travel reviews on-the-fly.

·      TripAdvisor Offline City Guides – a GREAT free app!  Choose the city you’re in and you get walking tours, city and subway maps, a neat “point me there” function to help you navigate, and much, much more.

Train Travel Apps:

·      DB Navigator – The app to access Deutsche Bahn services, including European train timetables.  Very useful on-the-go.

·      RailEurope – timetable searches, book tickets, Eurail pass research.

·      National Rail Enquiries – timetables and ticketing for all trains in the UK.  Also provides updates on delays and cancellations.

Travel Booking Sites Apps:

·      Kayak – offers a free app and a “pro” version for a minimal fee.  Allows you to book flights, hotels and cars.  You can view airline timetables, create multi-city searches, and access your saved trip itineraries from your device.  The pro version adds a currency converter, airport maps and an airfare trends search.

Blogging Apps:

·      Blogger – a Google app to complement its online blogger platform.  A little limited in what it can do versus the online tools available, but free.

·      Posts – a pretty good blog editor for your tablet only.  Works with WordPress and Blogger.  Be advised that it embeds photos into your blog rather than storing the pics in your Google Picassa web album, meaning viewers of your blog won’t be able to see enlargements of your photos or download copies from your web album.

·      BlogPress – a decent blog editor.

·      BlogTouch – small fee to purchase, it allows you to resize photos by dragging, which is a nice touch.  Also allows for pretty comprehensive text editing, tables, horizontal lines, etc.

Sections:
• Researching your Trip – Where – When – Budgeting
• Finding Cheap Airfare
• Hotels – Location, then Price
• European Train Travel – Spoke-and-Wheel vs. Point-to-Point
• Packing– clothing – Theory and Reality
• Packing– electronics – Theory and Reality
• Packing– accessories – Theory and Reality
• Packing– A Men’s Packing List for Europe
• Trip Preparation Timeline
• Staying Connected While Abroad – Blogging – Facebook – Twitter – Phone
• Travel Websites and Apps