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Apps We Use To Prepare For A Trip

I’m going to write a series about preparing for a trip, as well as how we set up when we arrive at a hotel. This will be the first of a series before I tell you about the many adventures we have been on.

Everyone uses different apps, I know. I can only tell you about the ones we use as we get ready for our next outing. Some of these apps I get from a site called Setapp. Setapp is a subscription-based site which hosts over 260 different apps – all available to a subscriber, as long as they are a member, which I have been for many years. And it is well worth the price, even if you only use 5 to 10 of their apps. I use over 30 of them at present.

Other applications and devices we use come either from the App Store, since we are all in on Apple, or we get from a vendor’s website. Let’s start with the first one:

Tripsy

I’ve used Tripsy for several years and it has served me well. I start by making a new trip. The first thing to do is set the start date and the end date of the trip. Then optionally choose a cover image for the trip. For instance, if we were going to New Orleans, I’d choose a photo of the French Quarters from their voluminous library of photos.

Next I start booking lodging. My wife usually plans the trip and has all the hotels laid out for me and the dates for our arrival and departure from each. She keeps all her many notes in her reMarkable e-ink tablet. She emails the pages to me from her tablet and I start making reservations.

When I make a reservation at a hotel I receive a confirmation email from the hotel. I forward that email immediately to Tripsy (who I have made into a contact in my address book, so it’s easy to send an email to Tripsy). Tripsy, knowing the date range of the trip, automatically enters the reservation into the proper trip, with the stay dates, the check-in and check-out times, logs the cost of the lodging, as well as the address and website of the hotel; all from the email. When we are ready to drive to the hotel, we just look up the hotel in Tripsy and it gives us directions, either on Google Maps or Apple Maps. It does the same for any Point of Interest (POI) we plan to see or eat at, including restaurants, museums, or parks.

Tripsy recently added Expenses, so now I can put all my expenses in for the trip and see what the total was that we spent. I like to divide the total by the amount of days of the trip to track the average it cost us on a daily basis.

reMarkable Tablet

This little tablet, which both of us own, has become an invaluable tool you don’t know you needed till you get one. With the pen that comes with it, that never needs charging on our model, you can handwrite notes. We very rarely use any paper now. And all our notes are stored digitally as soon as we write a note. Like I said, you have to try it yourself… [Another e-ink tablet that I have researched extensively, is the Supernote Manta. It goes way beyond what the reMarkable can do. If you like simplicity, use a reMarkable. If you are a professional or just love technology, look into the Supernote. Boox is also a well-liked e-ink tablet.]

I said all that to say this: My wife researches the entire trip on her computer and takes copious notes on her reMarkable. The tablet is light and small and is no problem to carry on the trip, take from room to room, or pack in a bag. Each trip involves well-organized pages of notes about the places we might, or might not visit. This comes in very handy as the trip progresses. Sometimes we have to make a reservation during the trip, and all the information is right there when we need it. (The reMarkable is simple – they call it “distraction free – as I said, and has no internet connection, so you’ll need your phone or a laptop on the trip – obviously. Yet it does sync between all of your devices so the information is there, whatever device we are on.)

Other Apps We Bring Along

We like to listen to a story on long trips. We listen to audio books we get from Amazon’s Audible app. It makes a long drive bearable.

I mount my iPhone on the vent in front of me in the car. Since we don’t have Car Play, I use Apple Maps on my phone to get me to our destinations. I know that it’s a personal preference thing; I just like Apple Maps better than Google. To each their own.

Next

In the next post I’ll write about what we do when we arrive at a hotel. How we set up in the room, what we check out, and exploring our new lodging. See you soon!

PS Leave a comment and share how you plan a trip. Our viewers would love to learn other ways to plan a trip.