I have been holding off posting new articles on my blog until the site was fully updated. Mission accomplished. I didn’t want to have to do things one way and then discover I had to completely undo them and redo them a completely different way. I do have several topics in mind in which I think you will be interested, so you can pretty much count on one new post a week from here on in for a while.
One of the things I wanted to write about was all the Apps that I find REALLY useful when we are traveling. Some of these you may be familiar with already, but hopefully, some will be new discoveries for you. I will do this in two posts simply because there are lots of Apps that I would like to show you.
A number of the Apps that I use on a regular basis are helpful in organizing our travel plans before we leave home but come even more useful when we are on the road. A couple are web-based ones that I typically use on my desktop or laptop. The good news is both can be loaded onto a mobile device as well.
I should clarify that when I say “Apps”, I mean useful “tools” that you can use to enhance your travel experience and solve problems. I will not be delving into general use travel related websites like Airbnb or airline booking sites.
In the second post, I will look at Apps that we use on our mobile devices, almost on a daily basis.
Google Maps
You are probably thinking, “Google Maps, I already use that at home, while I am driving, or locating places. Why do you think I need to read about this? What can you teach me that is new?”
Well, I do have a couple of tricks for which I use Google Maps that you might not be aware of. So, on we go!
Identifying Landmarks – The first image below is from the Airbnb listing of the place we rented in Marbella this past winter. I know, I know, you’re thinking, “what the heck does this have to do with Google maps?”
One of the irritating aspects of booking on Airbnb or VRBO, or most of the online booking sites, is that you do not know exactly where the rental unit is until after you book… check out the title image for this article. I find this particularly annoying so I have come up with a solution for how to find the building that we will stay in before we book.
When you look at an Airbnb listing it typically does provide an indication of the general area where the unit is located on a small map; that does help narrow the search area for sure. Sometimes in these listings they provide a photo of the exterior of the building, which is great, because that ultimately becomes a dead giveaway. If they don’t do that, I look at all the listing pictures and look for some easily identifiable landmark or building that shows up in the view outside one of the windows.
Having been to Marbella before, I knew exactly where the SKOL building was that appears in the view out this window. So, I knew immediately where the rental unit was located. When I don’t have that information, the following is how I approach tracking down the location of the rental unit.
Finding a Landmark – For the purposes of this demonstration, let’s pretend I did not know where the SKOL building was. If out the windows in the photos I see the name of a local business or some identifying feature with a name on it, I simply Google search that name and find its location.
As you can see in the second image, the SKOL building was easily found doing a search. Step one complete. If I did not know the location of that particular building, or if it wasn’t as boldly identified as it is, there is another excellent identifying feature in the window view of the example I am using. The building across the street from the apartment obviously has a curved corner.
In this same image you can also see that I have circled the building with the curved corner; BUT like me, you would probably have some difficulty identifying the curve in the standard view here in Google Maps. Knowing that a curve in the building is going to be very easy to identify in “satellite view,” I click on the “Layers” icon circled in the bottom left-hand corner and switch to satellite view.
Satellite View – In satellite view the curved building becomes blatantly obvious. And obviously, so does the building (red marker) where the rental unit must be. Apartment location detected.
Switching to Street View – If the Satellite View search doesn’t reveal what I’m looking for I will find the identifiable location and click on the street where it is located and switch to Street View. In this next photo, I have “pointed and clicked” in the middle of the street and a little gray marker has popped up… circled in red. The Street View box that I have also circled pops up at the bottom of the page. Clicking on that box switches you immediately into Street View. This basically places you on the street as if you are driving a car.
Street View – And there you have it, I am in the middle of the street driving towards the identifiable SKOL building. I am going the wrong way on a one-way lane but that doesn’t matter in Street View. 🙂
Using Street View – Sitting there staring at the SKOL building doesn’t really help me because what I need to see is behind me. Easily doable in Street View. If you click and hold down on the left side of the image and drag to the right, you will see that the image rotates around as you do so. If you click, hold and drag several times you can do a full 360° view from the point you are standing on if you want.
And that’s what I have done here in this image: clicked and dragged around 180° – and “Voila!”, I am now staring directly at the building where the rental unit is located. I can also tell pretty much which apartment it is from referring to the original image provided on Airbnb and calculating the height relative to the building across the street.
Checking Out the Neighborhood – Once I have identified exactly where the apartment is located, (circled in this next photo), I can start checking out what amenities are offered in the neighbourhood before I commit to renting. Back in standard view, I can already see several businesses identified in the general area of the building.
If you are a regular user of Google Maps you will know that if you zoom in, you can see even more business names identified. If you have already searched for something in this area you will notice that a number of tabs come up at the top of the page which allow you to click and identify the location of important amenities like “restaurants” or “attractions”.
Searching for Specific Amenities – None of those tabs at the top of the page included the one thing that we typically search for first. So, I did a separate search for “grocery stores”. As you can see, the location of a Maskom Supermarket quickly popped up, as did the location of some smaller grocery stores – note the red markers containing a little shopping cart icon. Excellent! A major grocery store is within easy walking distance, so this will probably be a good rental choice.
“Walking” Around the Neighbourhood – I always like to do a neighbourhood walk-around just to see first-hand what all the amenities look like from the outside. Here I have “walked” down the street where the Maskom grocery store is located and turned around and faced the building where the rental unit is located off in the distance. The grocery store looks like a decent one, so let’s rent the apartment!
Google Translate
Yes, it’s basically going to be an all “Google” article, but Google Translate is another of Google’s suite of Apps that I use on a regular basis. It is a great way to do language translations, either of sites that you need to review before leaving home that are in a different language. It can also be used to help you develop phrases in the local language for direct use with other folks as you travel.
Doing a quick search for Google Translate will easily locate its homepage for you. This first image shows what appears when the page pops up… less what I have already typed in of course. The default choice is to translate “text”, as you can see circled in the image.
Translating What You Type – The way it works is very simple. If necessary, you select the language you typically use in the left-hand dialogue box If it does not automatically set to “Detect Language”, and then select the language to which you want your text translated in the right-hand dialogue box. When you type your message will be automatically translated into whatever language you have chosen.
After the translation is complete, you can click on the little speaker icon circled in red in this image and it will read the translation to you. I will use this if I’m in a country where I would like to be able to speak the translated message to someone later in the day. Listening and repeating what it says is very helpful in learning phrases.
Before Google Translate was available as an App for mobile devices, I used the web-based app to figure out what I might want to ask or say, and then write it out on a piece of paper that I could just hand to someone. A typical example of me doing this would occur when I we needed to go and buy train or bus tickets. I would just hand that my handwritten note with my ticket purchasing requirements to the non-English-speaking person at the sales kiosk.
Dealing With Foreign Language Websites – You may have already found yourself in one of these situations – you are doing a little planning for your trip, and you want to check out information in your destination country that is only available on a website in the local language. Here is a typical example: Avanza is the Spanish bus service. I would really like to check on various bus schedules but really don’t even know how to approach it because the entire site is in Spanish.
Translating Foreign Language Websites – The good news is, as you might have expected, Google Translate will do that for you. As you can see here, all you need to do is select the “Websites” tab and a new page will pop up. You then simply paste the address for the website you want translated and click on the arrow.
After you do that the site you want to be able to read pops up translated into whatever language you have chosen. Easy Peezy. This website’s incredible translation feature is what led me to include access to it when we updated our website.
I will be covering Google’s mobile device versions of these two Apps in the second post in the series, but I prefer to use both Google Maps and Google Translate on my laptop. The desktop versions are much easier to read… old eyes you know. 🙂
Paprika Recipe Manager 3
“What? You want me to use a recipe management application? What the heck does that have to do with my travel needs?”
Hear me out. A recipe management application is not something you would normally associate with travel. But it is an absolute must for us when we are staying in a foreign location for an extended period of time… extended period of time being any situation where we will be doing our own cooking.
A couple of my buddies who are into cooking talked me into trying Paprika. And I do have to say that they were absolutely right – this is a fabulous tool. My immediate thinking was, why do I need a recipe management App when all my cookbooks and recipes binders are beautifully organized in the bookshelf in the kitchen?
It was when we went travelling that I realized what a wonderful tool this is. It is one that you have to pay for. I believe I paid $39.95 for the desktop version… mobile device versions cost less. I will speak about Paprika in more depth when I look at mobile Apps I use while on the road. But I’m going to give you a bit of a tease here.
Not Just a Recipe Holder – This little beauty does more than just keep your recipes collated and easily accessible. Check out the function circled in red in this image. It has a built-in “Browser” that lets you search for recipes. You can build your “Groceries” list in it and share it with your loved one. You can keep an inventory of all the food you have in the house in the App’s “Pantry”. Very handy for knowing what’s in the bottom layers of your freezer. And finally, it lets you plan “Meals” in a monthly calendar and build “Menus” for meals for current and future use.
You can enter recipes by hand; you can import them from ones you have found on the web, or you can use an OCR reader to scan and import recipes you have written out on paper. One of its features I really like is the ability to modify the recipe or add in variations as they come to mind. You can see in the next photo that I’ve entered several things in brackets that I wanted to incorporate the next time I make the recipe.
Yes, these are all useful travel applications that make your travel planning just a little bit better informed and easier to undertake. But the Apps that you will use most when you are out on the road are the ones that you will load onto your mobile device. These are coming up in Part 2.
