Hi everyone,
Today I'm joined by Pisti Marosi who traveled through the planet's most beautiful places with his girlfriend and, lucky us, he didn't forget to write a blog which can be found as Our Long Journey.

Two things are common between us: we work at the same place and we both love to travel. There are a couple of places we both visited so here is the first of a two part selection of our favorite traveling applications.

It's our principle that we don't like tapping our phones during holidays so these apps serve for the sake of responsible trip planning or they help us save time, money and energy. So let's dive in:

Orientation: Maps.me
You must be thinking that GoogleMaps should be enough for everyone everywhere. It's usually true if you have internet connection. Although, especially in third world countries, it's not that obvious. You might not want to pay for a local SIM card and even if you do it doesn't guarantee that you'll have signal. Maps.me contains downloadable, high-quality maps which are perfect for offline usage. You can search on the maps exactly like on similar online services and with GPS you can even navigate with it. The only drawback is that the maps usually occupy several hundred megabytes so you'll need capacity. 

Plane ticket search and book: Skyscanner, Momondo, GoogleFlights
If you travel overseas the ticket is likely to be the biggest item on your budget so it matters a lot. These flight ticket booking sites provide a huge help. You should use more than one of these. Before searching, it might be a good idea to do some research on the tips and tricks how you can find cheap tickets. First of all you should check several dates because sometimes one day can mean a big amount of money in price. Everyone has a favorite, for us it's the GoogleFlights but Skyscanner and Momondo are also reliable. One more tip: when you found your ticket it's worth to check the airline's own webpage maybe it's even cheaper there. Sometimes it's the same, in that case, I prefer buying it straight from the airline.

Contact: Skype, Viber
Most of us like to keep in touch with friends and family during travel and this is rather easy nowadays, we send an instant message or call them on Skype. But what if we don't have internet connection? Not many knows but Skype isn't just for online communication, it's probably the cheapest platform for regular cellular phone calls. From a distant country, it could cost us a lot of money to call home, on Skype it's much much cheaper. The only thing you have to do is to upload a few bucks to your Skype account. After each call you can check your balance.
Viber has a similar feature, it's called Viber-Out, unfortunately, in my experience, it doesn't work that well. 

Searching for local dining, touring, sightseeing opportunities: TripAdvisor, Yelp, Couchsurfing, Numbeo
If you didn't know TripAdvisor is a webpage where you can browse a location's best sights, accommodations, restaurants, and others according to other traveler's ratings. It's pretty reliable, you won't see what an owner wants you to see but rather other visitors opinions. If you want to know where to sit in for a dinner or just a coffee go to TripAdvisor! Of course, some people try to manipulate the ratings (hired people or acquaintances rate) which you can defend against by going to places which have many rating preferably from many countries. Everyone has preferences, it's not sure that you'll like what others liked so you should read the ratings especially the bad ones. Furthermore, on several occasions when I booked a table in a restaurant through the app I got a 20-50% discount, which is nice both for you and your wallet. 

Yelp is the "American TripAdvisor", comments are a little bit rougher and polarized (see the related South Park episode) but it works just as fine and you also can get discounts for your ratings.

The Couchsurfing, my favorite. I think it's the best traveling app out there. You can meet the most interesting people and get into unforgettable adventures. I've been on a random wedding, a lady's 90th birthday party, a luxury villa, all for free through the app. When I go Couchsurfing I always bring some little present with me, a postcard, fridge magnet at least to repay a little the local's kindness. When my luggage size allows a liter homemade pálinka takes the road with me.

Numbeo is a webpage true, but a very useful one and you should use it from home anyway. It's very simple, you write where you want to go and it lists the prices of essential groceries. If you travel somewhere it's good to know where the prices are. 

In the next part, we'll look at accommodation booking, photography, money exchange and translation. Until then please share your experiences in the comments. We'd like to know which apps helped you the most during your travels. Cheers!

Gabi&Pisti