Five original apps for your travels

Next Tuesday, September 27, is World Tourism Day. By this point we certainly don’t need to evangelize about the benefits of an intelligent use of your smartphone when traveling, whether you’re making reservations or getting your bearings in a new city. So in the spirit of the hour, we’ve put together a few Android travel apps that are a bit different from the usual ones – but still equally practical.

Pet Friendly

Lots of people can’t really leave their pets with a sitter or carer when they go traveling. That makes this tool to search places you can visit with your pet in tow a super useful one. Pet Friendly lets you search a certain area for hotels and restaurants that accept furry friends with open arms. This lets you plan your vacation without worrying about having to leave one of your family members at the door.

Couchsurfing Travel App

Besides being the name of the app, couchsurfing is quite an extended practice where people host travelers for free out of good will and at times even become their travel buddies. This app brings together users to offer backpackers a bed or sofa at no cost. Couchsurfing has its detractors, but the romanticism of swapping lodging in exchange for company or help around the house, when it works well, can really become a fantastic experience.

Drink Advisor

It’s all fine and good to traipse around finding delightful places, posh restaurants, and inspiring monuments. But hasn’t anybody thought about the bars? Drink Advisor is a database of places where you can get a good stiff drink in more than 200 countries, with a whole set of filters to apply to suit your needs. Fancy a cocktails? An artisanal microbrew? Your needs are all covered with this cool app.

WiFi Map Pro

Every traveler’s holy grail upon making it to a new destination where you have no cell service is to find an open WiFi network. WiFi Map Pro has logged a huge number of free access points, with pins for each of them on a map so you can get yourself to the closest open WiFi network with no problems. It also includes extra details on the network owner if the place is some sort of establishment or individual network, so you can cover your back in case you don’t trust an unknown WiFi network.

Glympse

It’s perfectly normal for your mum to worry about your safety when you’re traveling. Luckily, to avoid having to constantly keep her updated as to your whereabouts, there are tools like Glympse. This app lets you display your location at all times, with the plus that others don’t need to have the app installed to view it. You can send your exact location automatically over social networks or a chat message.