Tag: Traveling »

Finding your way around large cities can be hard enough.  When you mix in being a tourist and possibly not even living in the same country, things are bound to turn out disastrously.  What if there were a tool that could integrate with the GPS in your phone and help point out the best attractions in a bustling metropolis like London?  Say no more, because the new app Recce - London has got your back.

Centered around the goal of making the most of your visit to London, the awesome new tool combines the iOS device's GPS with their 3D mapping technology.  You can use the application for many different purposes such as locating landmarks and special experiences close to your geographical location. Heck, they even managed to throw in an updating subway schedule, just to make sure that you end up at the destination on time.

If you plan on visiting London anytime soon, this seems the kind of free app that you couldn't afford to leave home without.

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Andrew Harper, the popular travel expert and reviewer, now has his own iOS companion app for travelers specifically taking a trip to Paris. Andrew Harper's Paris: A Personal Guide to the Best of the City, includes his opinions of hotels, dining, shopping, and touring.

The app includes over 350 favorites of Harper. There are 14 different of Harper's favorite hotels in the app ranging from "grand palace addresses to intimate Left Bank alternatives." Each hotel has information about the rooms, dining, and features within the hotels. There are 83 different restaurants with menu recommendations and contact information. And it includes over 100 shopping locations with maps, contact info, opening hours, and recommendations.

Andrew Harper's Paris is a free app. Any of you readers planning on taking a trip to Paris in the near future should give this one a look.

Andrew Harper has been traveling and reviewing hotels and travel experiences for over 30 years. He's a respectable reviewer that pays all of his own traveling expenses and travels anonymously so that he gets the same experience any other traveler will receive.

Check out a video for the app, highlights, and a FAQ about the app at the Andrew Harper website, here.

Virgin Limted Edition and Gourmet Pixel have just released an iPad app for guests staying at Richard Branson's private game reserve. The game reserve borders on Kruger National Park in South Africa's Mpumalanga province and, while the vast majority of us and our readers will probably never use this app or visit this location, we think that this use of the iPad as a concierge service is quite cool.

The app isn't available for download. The way it works is that, on arrival to their rooms, guests will find an iPad with the Virgin Limited Edition Ulusaba app already loaded on it. The guests can use the app to view the services available to them at the reserve, find information about the location, read individual messages from the lodge staff, send postcards, view itineraries, weather, interactive maps, games, and info on animals they may see. The app may also see future updates including things like ordering room service and booking activities.

This likely isn't the first app for Gourmet Pixel and VLE as they described it as the initial offering for the concept of a concierge service. We may soon be hearing about more iPad-based concierge systems for Virgin Limited Edition.

Summer is upon us (although us Brits wouldn't be so sure about that one) and so begins the great holiday rush. One such popular resort in Europe is that of Santorini, an island just off Greece's mainland. There's a lot to like about the place, with some fantastic geography thanks to its volcanic cone and all the great mythology that comes from Greece and its islands.

For those who intend to visit the island, there's now an app to help guide the way. Experience Santorini is available in iPhone and iPad varieties, both offering a user friendly and welcoming way of helping its users get acquainted with the island. It promises to reveal the place's darkest secrets and offers more than 500 suggestions for places to stay, eat, shop and enjoy. The app works offline also to ensure that there are no pesky excessive roaming data charges involved too. As is always useful with such things, the app tells the user what attractions are nearby them, whether it be a beach, museum, archaeological site or just a nice cafe to relax at.

The iPad version also boasts more than 20 minutes of videos offering interviews with archaeologists and winemakers of the area amongst others.

Throughout the rest of the app, the general ambience and design looks ideal for the tourist, so hopefully it'll be a great help to anyone visiting Santorini this summer.

The app is out now and priced at $4.99 for the iPhone/iPod Touch version and $6.99 for the iPad HD version.