I love travel books. I love to read them, look at the pretty pictures, plan impossible scenarios (like Austra, Germany, and St. Petersburg in 15 days), and generally absorb it all. Then comes the packing problem – what to take, what to leave. Who makes the cut? Rick Steves (he even tells you which other guides to buy in each country- I still cherish my Granada guide), although he has blind spots, like anybody. I love Eyewitness, but they’re heavy. There’s always Lonely Planet, and Moon, and even the old reliables of Frommer and Fodor. Some people photocopy the key pages from the guides and leave the books home. If you’re traveling light and trying to avoid the airlines lovely new bag fees, then the guidebook dilemma has moved from mildly annoying to serious.
Comes now Apple with a solution: an application called Paris Sights is availalbe on the iPhone. It is an illustrated, searchable, audio guide – you can sort by popularity, type, area, or alphabetically. It has both on-line and off-line maps. decreasing costly internet time. It is downloadable from iTunes.
If there aren’t applications for Provence and other hot areas, there soon will be . . . right France Tourism Bureau? Francophile technowizards?
Which leads me to my next idea: if you want to avoid the iPhone monthly fee and being captive to AT&T, the iTouch might work for this. Get an iTouch, load it with Skype, and then load these other apps – a portable computer with international telephone service.
Baggage-free, in so many ways!