Traveling With Tech: My Gadgets and My Experiences

My family and I have finally returned from a week long vacation in Seattle and Vancouver. I’m documenting our trip over at UNcubed, but I wanted to use this space to share a little about the tech tools I used for our trip.

Gadget-wise, I packed incredibly light this time around, limiting myself to my new iPhone5, my erstwhile iPad2, and two chargers (AC and car). The nutty thing about the iPhone5 is that it uses a different connector than the iPhone4 – so I had to pack along two USB cables so that my wife could charge her iPhone as well.

Pro tip: When planning a trip, always pack a car charger in addition to your AC charger. You’ll thank me later…

We relied on our iPhones for nearly every aspect of our trip. But before the trip, we used sites like Trip Advisor and PriceLine to vet out potential lodging and rental car options. Both services were easy to use and made the process of purchasing said options very simple. Trip Advisor also has a variety of useful planning guides you can save for when you arrive at your destination. For instance, you can choose a 1-day itinerary, a 3-day itinerary, Kid’s itinerary, etc. This saved us a bunch of time when planning our vacation.

For planning the trip and keeping all of our hotel, airline, and rental car confirmations in one place – do yourself a favor and download Kayak. It does a stellar job of keeping track of your confirmation documents, but even better than that – Kayak sends you email alerts for airline check-ins, gate changes, and any flight delays. With Kayak, I felt like I had a personal travel assistant with me the entire time. It’s worth its weight in gold.

While driving, Aarti and I both depended heavily on Google Maps. The turn-by-turn directions made traveling around Seattle a breeze. We also used Apple Maps early into our trip, but we found it to be quite useless (more on that in a bit).

For dining options, we leaned heavily on Yelp. Through Yelp, we found some terrific eating options that we never would have discovered on our own. We didn’t have to “settle” on a place – we were able to crowd-source the best-of-the-best and make each dining opportunity a “win”. Yelp is a must-have app in my book. The only irritating aspect to Yelp is that it uses Apple Maps instead of Google Maps. On our first night in Seattle, we were literally making loops, following Apple’s Map application. Note to Yelp developers: have an option to use Google Maps instead of Apple’s own. Please.

For visually documenting our trip, I made use of the built-in Camera app. On the iPhone5, the Camera app works the way it should – without the annoying lag found in the iPhone4.

Because we relied on our phones so much, it was somewhat of a shock to not be able to use them when we crossed the border into Canada. To avoid roaming charges, we disabled the “Cellular” portion of our phone and relied on Wi-fi access where ever we went. The net result: less spontaneous on-the-go travel and much more pre-planning. Thankfully, the hotel we stayed at in Burnaby (close to Vancouver) had the most amazing high-speed Internet connection (for free, even!) – that we were able to work around the logistics.

Having the iPhone, I didn’t really miss my laptop. I was able to do nearly everything I needed with these devices. I didn’t miss the added weight of shouldering a laptop everywhere I went. In trips past, I remember carrying a separate camera, phone, and laptop – having everything consolidated into one device (the iPhone) made things much, much easier to deal with.

Our iPad was used primarily within our hotel room. The bigger screen made it immensely easier to research events and attractions. It was also immensely useful in entertaining my 5 year old daughter throughout the trip.

Also along for the ride was my new Otterbox Commuter case for the iPhone5. I can’t attest to how it protects the iPhone after a drop (and quite frankly, I don’t want to), but its silicone / polycarbonate exterior made my phone easy to grip while on the go.

In summary, having these gadgets and apps along for the trip allowed me focus on my vacation and less on the mundane logistics. And that’s why this trip really was a vacation in the truest sense of the word.

What must-have gadgets and apps do you rely on while traveling? Share your favorites in the comments below!

-Krishna