Ladee's Travels: iPhone, Kindle and Travel Books

Sunday, March 20, 2011

iPhone, Kindle and Travel Books

The rule for this trip is to only have carry-on. I'll have a wheeled bag and a backpack. This isn't easy for a five week trip, although it is fortunate that the climate won't have great variations. Every ounce and inch counts as I move from place to place. I've done a lot of study on the major cities, marked maps (in the iPhone) so that it will be easy to get from one place to another walking, by bus, or by subway. I have several tools in my iPhone that I am testing and will be able to report as to what worked best, what had limitations.

Travel tools that I have with me on the iPhone:
Currency
Tripit
CityMaps2Go
RATP Lite (Paris Metro system)
Rick Steves' Audio Europe 2011 (pick and choose your walking tours and podcasts...nicely organized and easy to use)
AirBnB

If you can suggest additional iPhone apps that work well with travel, please list them in the comments section.

I have also decided to use the iPhone Kindle tool for the tour books. I wanted an up to date version of the tour books with me, but again I'm challenged with available space and extra weight. I had contimplated ripping out the pages for the specific city...and while that was still an option I decided to try Amazon's Kindle books for iPhone. The Kindle books were half of the listed book price, so I saved some money with the electronic copy. I bought one first, and looked at the quality and readability on the iPhone. Very nicely done, easy to read, and I was able to put a bookmark on the pages that had particular interest.