Nomad Apps – What to do?

Digital Nomad Apps

What to see? Apps.

Hopefully by now you have looked, booked and arrived at your destination, sure you have work to do but let’s have some fun first yeah? Trouble is, what do you do? Maybe you are a really well organised and disciplined Digital Nomad that has spent the flight pouring over travel guides, listening to travellers podcasts and mapping out your itinerary with military precision. If not, no worries, you’re just like the rest of us, have a look at these apps to maybe get an idea.

Ps. These apps are all free but may contain in-app purchases.

Tried, trusted, touristic.

May as well start with the generic, everyone knows them, everyone uses them, someone may have forgotten about them apps. Below are some of the most popular, straight forward apps available to you for free.

TripAdvisor – Old faithful for the Digital Nomad/holidaymaker/backpacker/rambler/everyone leaving their home-town ever-er. There are a lot of things the apps available to you through TripAdvisor can’t do, they can’t tell you the football scores or sing Morrissey tracks at you for instance, but if it’s anything travel related you should be in luck. The TripAdvisor app gives you a comprehensive listing of practically everything you could wish to see wherever you are in the world. To be fair I’m pretty certain that if someone has stumbled across an interesting looking stone somewhere in this wide world it will be listed. The app is easy to use and the results can be filtered/sorted and listed in all sorts of ways meaning you can easily narrow the list down into more approachable numbers. TripAdvisor is a really useful app for everyone but you might get more out of it if you’re the kind of guy/girl who needs to know what another 40,788 people thought of the Colosseum in Rome before going yourself.

TouristEye by Lonely Planet – As above really. TouristEye is another app giving you hints, tips and recommendations for destinations all over the world. A nice feature of TouristEye is that everything works offline meaning that no WiFi = no problem. Text, pictures and the maps are all available offline which can be really handy for the Digital Nomad in a slightly less digital area.

World Travel Guide by Triposo – The world travel guide is an interesting app as it offers you the chance to pick a country/city and download a comprehensive guide to your device. The guides all contain maps, information on restaurants, sights, attractions, a currency converter, useful phrasebook, weather forecasts and more. Basically you could probably get away with reading the guide and not bother going yourself! Triposo do a lot of the work for you and this really is a one stop shop app. Of the three listed this is the one I use. That might be because I’m rather lazy though?

Be different (except from the millions of other travellers doing it) and live like a local.

Some people prefer to stay away from the crowded tourist hotspots, they want to do things differently, their own way. Not for them the popular, culturally rewarding, stood the test of time attractions, if all those other people want to see it, it’s probably not that cool yeah? There are many words for these people depending on your way of thinking but there are also a few apps aimed at them.

Localeur – Currently only serving a select few American cities (that’s how cool it is) Localeur lists recommendations from locals on where to eat and what to see. It’s an immensely popular app (APParently) and I’ve read a few reviews saying it’s like being friends with the 10 coolest people in the city. You’re still going to be eating on your own though.

HeyLets – HeyLets is only available on Apple, is Apple still super cool? It looks pretty wicked though, the app has recommendations in over 90 countries and lets you browse pictures and videos to help you decide on what looks cool to you. An interesting feature is the option to stalk follow people, this lets you follow anyone whose travels have inspired you to copy their ideas plan your own unique adventure.

Epical – Another Apple only app, that proves it, they must still be super cool? Epical lets you find places within places. It looks a bit like a secret club to be honest. If you don’t want to tell people flat-out about your find you can set it to ‘be there’ mode, which will only show up when others are in close proximity. Bit pretentious for my tastes, I thought elitism was for the rich and famous? I’m just bitter…

Gogobot – Another city explorer, gogobot has a pretty cosmic name and looks quite cool to be fair. The tag line is ‘Find the best places to eat, sleep or play, based on tips from people like you’. Take from that what you will. The site has all the features you would expect and is available on Apple and Android making it more accessible (and less cool?). I would probably use this should I ever feel the need. It seems to be the nicest basically, not for snobs!

Best of the rest.

Foursquare – Over 75 million short reviews apparently, that’s going to take some reading. Surely though with those numbers you’re pretty likely to succeed in finding somewhere decent to go? Foursquare has been around for years and is a name you can trust, you simply put in your location or let it find you, tell it what you want ie. Food, fun, night-life etc and let it do the rest.

Yplan – Yplan is only available in 3 places I think, London, San Francisco and New York, but if you are in one of those 3 places it’s like having an events organiser in your pocket. Yplan updates daily ensuring you are in the know when it comes to things to do. Y not?

Trover – Another site that does what you’d expect it to in an article on travel ‘things to do’ apps. It’s getting quite tedious now to be honest, remember when you used to have to buy a book, I miss books. Alas, Trover, in their own words, is ‘powered by a joyful community of wanderers and photographers who seek share-worthy things to see and do all over the world’. If that sounds like something for you have a look. If not, try a different one.

You should hopefully have a few ideas of places to see? If not try an app, if you know any other good ones share them below with your fellow Digital Nomads. Have a great day.