Apps I've been loving!

Writing a different kind of post today :) you may or may not know that I am very digitally organized, and I have an app for so many things that enable me to live my life a little easier. After 9 months on our trip, I reflected which apps on my iPhone that I'm most thankful were created and wanted to share them - most of these apps aren't just travel-related, anyway!

Copilot

Let's start straight off the bat with one of the most important things in our life: Money! 💸 I shamefully wouldn't track my expenses super closely when I was living in SF. I mean I would skim through my credit card statements every 1-2 months just to make sure nothing looked weird or off, but most of it would result in, "damn I really did spend that much on DoorDash that month 😶". When we started traveling, I knew I couldn't have those same bad habits. Most places have been taking credit card or Apple Pay luckily, but unless you're taking note of exactly what you paid for and when, it gets harder to ensure you're not getting hacked. Enter, Copilot! Our favorite (and pretty life-changing) podcast All the Hacks put us on this budgeting and expense tracking app, and we have been using it so diligently. I'm proud to say we know exactly how much we paid for on everything since the start of our trip, all because this app makes it sooo easy.

Why I like using Copilot:

• Adi and I can add both of our traveling credit and debit cards to this mutual account (it imports your transactions from your credit card account within minutes), so everything we pay for with a merchant or vendor immediately shows up on an easy-to-view screen.

• Point blank, the UI is just beautiful (user interface and user experience is very, very important to me, for me to consistently use an app). My sister does UX research for a living, and I'm her favorite person to use in a research study since I have A LOT of detailed critiques for why an app does or doesn't work well for me 😆

• After it logs a transaction, it automatically categorizes it (things like restaurants, gas, lodging, etc) - and compiles all these categories into a dashboard to show you how much you paid for each of these categories per month, and whether you're over or under budget! So after we finish visiting a country, Adi and I make time to review these transactions and their categories, edit the ones that seem mislabeled, and hit "reviewed✔️". Once all our transactions have been reviewed, we complete the credit card payment for that month.
  

This app is so easy to use, and it's just so... pretty? that it makes expense tracking simple, clear, and not a pain in the butt. So good to build this good habit, traveling or not (I know this now lol) - but yeah, 1000% recommend!!

Wanderlog

I searched far and wide for trip planning apps before we left. I still haven't found one that I swear by, but I do think Wanderlog is pretty good. You basically save restaurants, sightseeing places, shops, etc to the app, and the app will group things together based on location. Lets say you want to see 7 different places in Tokyo over the course of 3 days, Wanderlog will plot all of these spots on a map for you, so you can see which places are in which neighborhood. From there, you create your 3 day itinerary! So easy, because grouping things by neighborhood is what's key here - no one wants to bounce back and forth across a city, so you need to see how far each place is from the previous one. Also, Wanderlog even adds walking time here ➕ ➕ genius, I tell you!

I haven't used this app so much for trip planning (I'm just used to Microsoft OneNote, for the free-writing and page management aspect), but Wanderlog has been excellent for retrospective reviews. If there are landmarks and restaurants/bars that Adi and I liked and want to recommend to our friends, we logged it in Wanderlog. And we are so happy to share this with you so pleaseee feel free to ask us about this, you can literally just copy our itinerary 🥰

Day One

There are new things I'm trying on this trip, like daily journaling! I've always thought it was so cool when people had a diary or journal, so they can look back on their thoughts or things they did. My mother in law is excellent at this actually, she's been keeping one for years! Inspired me to start one too, especially because the closest thing I currently have is the Google Photos widget with their, "on this day, 10 years ago..." that more often brings up feelings of regret 🤣

I do take a picture almost everyday, so thought to try journaling while on this trip. Not only has it been fun to jot down what we did that day, but some days it's even a small release of feelings that come up (journaling has so many good mental health benefits)! I don't write a lot everyday: sometimes it's just a single caption for the picture of my breakfast, and some days it's more. The ability to do audio note and include the transcription is super helpful! And for my goldfish brain, I like the feature to add tags and search through entries. I have quite a few tags for things like #boardgames and #movies-I-watched 😌

My favorite part of all this though, is to see this cool calendar view. A picture from every day is posted into this beautiful grid 😍

Airalo

I should make a whole separate post about random FAQs haha but one of our FAQs is how we use our phone data plan while abroad - I hate that AT&T is so expensive!! So I'm glad to have found Airalo, an app that sells eSims. Most of the latest phone models have eSim compatibility, and so by downloading Airalo, you can load up the eSIM with money (something like $37 gives you 10gb of data and that's been enough for a 2 week trip.) Once you've paid, there are clear instructions on how to add the eSim and start using your data plan when you land in another country. And then you're finally able to use it for very important things like google maps, and scrolling instagram on the train 🤪

MadFit

I loved my workout classes and gym time back in SF, but I also saw the effectiveness of home workouts during Covid. I learned about Madfit during this time, and 4 years later, I still think this is the best workout app out there. The owner Maddie has programs and videos on strength training and cardio, and also has other trainers for yoga and barre. And I just love her personality - super chill, minimal talking in the video, and just straightforward workouts where you can pick the time duration, equipment, and intensity. I think I'm gonna support her til the end of time 😄

The last few months, we started carrying around a yoga mat haha! So on brand for me, I can't live without yoga and mat pilates. Mat and floor exercises are good for you too, studies have shown that getting up and off the ground frequently, and making it a part of your daily routine, can extend your life. I'm especially grateful for the barre videos when I injured my knees. Do you know how hard it was to meet some of Adi's family members for the first time at his cousin's wedding last year, and awkwardly explain that I'm not usually in a wheelchair?! 😅 Seriously, I want to personally thank Maddie some day, her app is so simple to use and it helped me be more consistent than any other workout app I've tried.

Other noteworthy apps to shout out:

• Translation: Google Translate has a camera where you can hover over a menu or food labels at a grocery store, and the translation will pop up over it. I like the "detect language" feature, I learned that parts of Belgium somehow have 3 different languages spoken in it, so sometimes I didn't even know what input language to enter 🤔

• Self-guided Walking Tours: My boy Rick Steves has a GREAT app for Europe, but not all cities are included unfortunately! That's when GPS My City has come in clutch - a map of where the most notable sights in the city are, and a small blurb of what each sight is known for.

• Beat jet lag: Timeshifter is an app I've only used a couple times (we actually hardly experience jet lag, since we kind of 'inch' our way across the world) - but I love how clear and direct it is to help you beat this hard problem. You log your current timezone, and then your destination's - then about 3-4 days before your trip, it'll give you advice on when to get ready for bed, when to take melatonin, when to drink coffee, etc. Again, apps that just tell you what to do without you having to think about it, it's the greatest.

• Books for trip planning: I love internet research but I also get overwhelmed about how endless it is. I try not to be the person who has 80 tabs open when googling, "how many days to spend in Puglia" but I still can't help it. What has helped, though, is the fact that Kindle Unlimited has many travel books included in their subscription. Our go-to book brand is Lonely Planet, and it's been so helpful to just read this book, take what you need, and move on! (but of course my over-optimizing self can't help but read a few more websites online, you know, juuuust to be sure 😬)

I hope this post was helpful or interesting to you! If you're an app nerd like me, I'd love to hear more about apps you enjoy using or any that has made your life easier. Who knows, maybe we can even build something together one day, to beat a mundane (yet needed) problem 🙌