Apps for Paris?

music lover

We're going in September and have been searching for an app like the one we had for London - you could put in an address and it would tell you the best way to get there from your current location. Can anyone recommend one that works in Paris?

RJS666

We used the Google map app while in Paris and it worked well. Mapquest is also good. But, both use your phone's data plan.

TauckTim

Hi music lover,

RJS666's suggestions about Google Maps is a good one, and has worked for me while overseas, but I'd recommend checking your directions, and saving them to your phone, while at the hotel over the wifi, rather than using data. Wifi is complimentary for all Tauck guests, and you can avoid potentially costly overseas data charges.

Or, if you have some kind of plan that allows for roaming data usage, you should be all set to use your phone as normally.

I hope this helps!

-Tim

Ken from Vegas

Hi music lover,

I agree with using Google maps. You should know that you can cache maps into your phone or tablet so that they will be available offline. Go to support.google.com and search for "cache google maps." It varies between Android and iOS and which version of the app you have, so I won't try to explain it here. Takes surprisingly little space to cache the map for a major city. You can do this in your hotel or at home before you leave.

By the way, this may not be what your looking for, but Rick Steves has a app with free audio tours of major European cities. Nice walking tours with maps available for download. Go to ricksteves.com and search for audio tours or look for Rick Steves Audio Europe in your app store.

Hope this helps.

[Deleted User]

Check out CityMaps2Go. This is an inexpensive one-time payment app ($1.99 for iPhone) which then lets you download unlimited open source maps for EVERYWHERE (used them when visiting South Georgia Island!). The maps then reside on your device and work when you are off the network. GPS or cell tower positioning (less good) on devices which have it will show you where you are. Optionally, you can download wiki data for each map. This is a great app. We downloaded and had available highly detailed (street level for cities) maps for all the places for our recent Tauck trip to China. Maps are updated frequently so when you are back on the net you can download the latest. This works particularly well with Tauck's free Internet in the hotels. Just load up/update the maps while in the hotels. They also have impressively fast servers and efficient compression so the download of tens of megabytes of maps usually takes only a minute or two.

Dixie Chick

To Music Lover
Will you be on the trip Paris, Normandy, etc that begins in Versailles on September 19? My husband and I will be on that one. We are going a day early to have amore time for Versailles, and we would like to connect with some fellow travelers. Hope to see you.
Nancy