Europe in Your Hand: Four Apps to Pack for European Travels

Europe is a continent with a cast of different characters, languages, currencies, sights and sounds. It is always a popular continent in the summer, where you can be in Paris one day and down to Lisbon the next. With so much to see in such a concentrated area, travelers frequently pack their backpacks and gear for European lands for the summer. Before you jet set, you’ll need a smartphone full of apps geared toward European travel to get you through that continent and its cast of characters.

UNESCO World Heritage App: You don’t always need a full guidebook while traveling around Europe. The area is littered in UNESCO World Heritage sites, but you might miss a few near you due to the volume of those sites. The UNESCO World Heritage app helps you locate those sites in Europe. The app also provides information on the UNESCO World Heritage sites along with photographs of the wonders. You can choose from cultural, natural or mixed sites. The app is provided by Harper Collins Publishes and costs $2.99.

XE Currency App: While you might assume most countries in Europe are under the Euro, a trip around the continent will quickly tell you a different story. From Scandinavia down to Switzerland, there are a number of countries in Europe that do not follow the Euro. Travelers must pack a currency converter to avoid just throwing down cash and not knowing the cost. XE Currency App is one of the most acclaimed, in large part due to its compatibility with a wealth of different devices including the Android, iPhone and Blackberry. The free version is a pretty straightforward currency calculator. It has every world currency with live rates. If you aren’t on the Internet, the app still works to convert that last updated rate. If you are traveling through several countries in Europe, you can use the app’s monitor feature to have up to 10 different currencies quickly on hand.

Rail Europe App: Using the train systems in Europe is one of the most popular forms of getting around the continent. Rail Europe, Inc. makes its Rail Europe app for the iPhone to help travelers make sense of those train systems and timetables. The free app is mostly geared toward North American travelers. However, it does universally get the job done if you are looking to check rail schedules on 35 rail lines and across 32 countries. In addition to just viewing train schedules, you can also book your tickets with the app. It has a convenient book trips feature based on location if you are feeling spontaneous and want to see where you could be by train in a few hours.

Duolingo App: You would hate to be that backpacker in Europe this summer that fails to learn a signal word of the local language. While you can find travel apps with phrasebooks for specific countries, Duolingo makes language learning a little easier with their language app. The app features courses in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and English. You build up your language learning and climbing the app’s levels as a result. So while you are waiting for your long flight over the pond, you can learn a little bit of the most widely spoken languages in Europe in the process. The Duolingo App comes free of charge and it is available for both the iPhone and the Android.

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