Today was the greatest. I managed to navigate my way through the city and find the most beautiful bookstore I have ever seen. It was just absolutely unbelievable. I can't believe how many books there were! They were stacked all over the place! They were stored in random things like bathtubs and gondolas! This may be my favorite part of my whole trip. I grabbed me a beautiful old book by Sinclair Lewis as the perfect souvenir. When I went to cehck out there was a cat eating breakfast where you should pay and a very Italian man smoking away. He told me "If women are flowers, you are a bouquet." Craziness! There was also a weird erotica section... It was quite the experience and probably my favorite part. It was quirky and literary! There was even a staircase built of books out back so you could climb up and watch the gondolas go by! BEAUTIFUL. You could also watch the gondolas from the best reading nook in the world...
Anyway, afterwards I husteld back to my hostel and grabbed my stuff and headed off to Florence! I got to the train station alright and boarded with no trouble at all - except apparently I left my toiletry bag... Womp Womp. I have everything else including my makeup and liquids. I'm really just out my shampoo bar (Which wasn't all that great actually - I don't think I like this variety as much as the green kind), my deoderant, tooth brush and toothpaste, and my hairbrush. All in all less than $10 worth of stuff. Hey if I have to lose something that's the bag I would choose to lose. I must have missed packing it in my bag. You can bet I'll be triple checking when I pack up from Florence!
Once I was in Florence I got to my hostel, no problem. My first stop was a grocery store to stock up! Now I won't have to buy breakfast, lunch or dinner for several days. That will save me a ton! I wandered about the Duomo and even bought myself a nice fancy leather jacket! I'm so excited about it. I have been trying to figure out what I want my big souvenir to be and I think I found the perfect. one ;)
Anyway, I go to see the statue of David first thing tomorrow morning so it's bed time for me!
Lots of love,
Malena
Showing posts with label Travel app. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel app. Show all posts
Monday, January 5, 2015
Thursday, January 9, 2014
The Best Travel App Out There
While I was in Europe the past two weeks I came across the absolute best travel app out there. I was on the hunt for an app that would provide me with an offline map of Paris. Coletta and I were going to be going all over Paris and I wanted to be able to help us find our way around without the use of the oh-so-scarce wifi. That is when I stumbled across the Ulmon Paris App.
After a little bit of research, I learned that the Ulmon app is not just for Paris, but in fact there is a separate app for just about every major city out there! I loved the app so much I got the one for Amsterdam and Barcelona as well.
By now you are probably wondering, "What makes this app so special?" Well. To start with it has a very detailed offline map with GPS capabilities. If you turn on the location tracker it will automatically show where you are and which direction you are facing when you open the app. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this app!
It offers suggestions of most popular attractions in that particular city. It also divides up the popular places by category - ratings, top places, hotels, food, nightlife, entertainment & arts, transportation, shops... the list goes on and on. Not only does it just tell you what the attraction is, but it provides a link to wikipedia (again offline) that tells you the history of the attraction. You can also just search for a street, place or area and it will pull up the spot on the map for you.
You can also choose to pin locations that you want to visit. You even have the option to color code your pins. For example, Coletta and I pinned our hotel as blue, the places we wanted to visit green - which we changed to purple after we saw them, and yellow for the places we were undecided about. You can also take a picture of the location when you're there and it gets added to your pin!
The other nice thing is that it shows the subway/ public transportation stops of the area. The app can pull up a list of attractions/ sites that are near you and it typically included a nearby subway stop. This aspect of the app was invaluable in Paris, but in Amsterdam I pretty much just walked everywhere because it is a smaller city.
Oh and did I mention that this app is free??? I believe that if you purchase more than 5 cities it may start to cost but I couldn't find details on that yet... Regardless, this app is totally worth it!
You may be wondering if there were any drawbacks to the app? The only thing I wish the app did include would be the price of attractions.
Overall, I recommend this app whole-heartedly. I couldn't believe how much I used it in both Paris and Amsterdam. This is a must have for all travelers headed to a major city!
Malena
Follow my blog here
By now you are probably wondering, "What makes this app so special?" Well. To start with it has a very detailed offline map with GPS capabilities. If you turn on the location tracker it will automatically show where you are and which direction you are facing when you open the app. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this app!
It offers suggestions of most popular attractions in that particular city. It also divides up the popular places by category - ratings, top places, hotels, food, nightlife, entertainment & arts, transportation, shops... the list goes on and on. Not only does it just tell you what the attraction is, but it provides a link to wikipedia (again offline) that tells you the history of the attraction. You can also just search for a street, place or area and it will pull up the spot on the map for you.
You can also choose to pin locations that you want to visit. You even have the option to color code your pins. For example, Coletta and I pinned our hotel as blue, the places we wanted to visit green - which we changed to purple after we saw them, and yellow for the places we were undecided about. You can also take a picture of the location when you're there and it gets added to your pin!
The other nice thing is that it shows the subway/ public transportation stops of the area. The app can pull up a list of attractions/ sites that are near you and it typically included a nearby subway stop. This aspect of the app was invaluable in Paris, but in Amsterdam I pretty much just walked everywhere because it is a smaller city.
Oh and did I mention that this app is free??? I believe that if you purchase more than 5 cities it may start to cost but I couldn't find details on that yet... Regardless, this app is totally worth it!
You may be wondering if there were any drawbacks to the app? The only thing I wish the app did include would be the price of attractions.
Overall, I recommend this app whole-heartedly. I couldn't believe how much I used it in both Paris and Amsterdam. This is a must have for all travelers headed to a major city!
Malena
Follow my blog here
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