Our Top Travel Planning Apps

Friends, we have planned an amazing trip through Scotland's Year of Stories and cultural history events. For two unseasoned world travelers, the planning alone has already been an adventure. Along the way, we've used some apps to help organize our efforts and in the spirit of sharing that you would expect from a teacher and school librarian, we are eager to share some of the travel apps that we are using.

Transportation Planning

Air Transportation: There are no shortage of websites for planning airline tickets. For our trip, Expedia.com had the best options and prices for booking our trip. We are flying Delta and Virgin Atlantic, so we've also downloaded both apps for loading required travel documents, online check-in, and flight notifications.

Ground Transportation: We opted to rent a car for part of our trip and went back to Expedia for the best deal on a vehicle with unlimited mileage for the second half of our trip.

Otherwise, we plan to rely on public transportation and walking. Rome2Rio.com (and the app) offers superb planning for all of our travel planning. With detailed departure times, travel times, specific train/bus lines, and prices, this app makes it easy to decide which route to take. In fact, this one is what pushed us to rent the car. In our initial planning, we hadn't realized just how early and long that train ride between cities was going to be, but the unfriendly hours for departing to reach our destination in time was the final deciding factor. The car will not only allow us to get more rest, but also adds one more element of storytelling to our trip.

Itinerary Organizing

Even though we had done extensive planning for this trip when writing our grant application, keeping track of all of our plans began to feel a bit overwhelming. We created a Google Doc to share our daily schedule and each of us had copies of all the reservations in a folder in our gmail. Still, one of us (okay, the librarian), really wanted some way to see it all in one place.

Enter Wanderlog.com This freemium app organizes your itinerary in an elegantly simple format with easy uploading of all your tickets, reservations, and contact information. When you put your day in order, there are even helpful links to transportation planning between destinations. You can upload your own pictures and details about each destination, too. In case we have any down time (we don’t), it also recommends other places at the end of each day based on your location. May be useful for dining recommendations.

Other perks include expense reporting and adding collaborators for travel companions. It makes our plans more visible and less chaotic.

In search of... Packing App

We are running out of time to shop and pack for the trip. In theory, a nice packing app could help streamline this, too. Finding that perfect app has been more elusive.

Packpnt.com may be the best option so far. It lets you enter your destination, dates of travel, and planned activities. Then, it checks the weather and builds a checklist of clothing, accessories, and essentials you need to bring. You have to upgrade to customize the packing template and sync to Tripit (similar to Wanderlog) and Evernote.

Packing Pro is a similar option with even more control than Pack Point offers, including planning for weight of items and individual bags packed.

Your Turn!

What is your favorite travel planning app or resource? We'd love to hear about it in the comments.