Travel Tip Tuesday : iPhone Apps for Rome

With the recent unleashing of Apple’s iPad tablet, and the public’s accidental discovery of their new iPhone 4 model (left at a bar by an Apple engineer), it seems that Apple’s unique technology has been gaining immense popularity.

For those who already own an iPhone, (or an iPad), there are many applications (apps) you can download to enhance your travels. There are even locale-specific applications available for use. Let’s say you are planning a trip to Rome—there are quite a few apps that are specific to making your travels in Rome even more exciting. Here are a few:

Rick Steves Ancient Rome Tour

This app just seems so cool! If you are not familiar with Rick Steves, he is known for his travel guidebooks, mainly on European cities and countries. With this app, you can have Steves as your own multimedia (merges text, audio, and video) tour guide through ancient Rome. It provides you with a map showing tour sites, which allows you to tap on the sites and find out detailed information about their history (especially the Colosseum and the Forum). This app also allows you to find out more information about hotels and restaurants, and allows you to zoom in for closer looks at the locations. It costs $2.99 for this ancient Rome tour—a bargain when you compare it to other more expensive tours available in Rome. It is actually on sale right now!

Leonardo Da Vinci Airport Guide

If you fly into Rome, you will most likely arrive at the Leonardo Da Vinci airport; and if you are familiar with how confusing airports can be, especially in countries where you don’t speak the native language, it can become tricky to get through it all efficiently. Luckily, for Rome-goers, there is an iPhone app guide to the Da Vinci airport. With this gem, you can access transportation information, airline numbers and terminal information (complete with maps), and airport pictures. You even get a Rome Metro map! On top of all of this, this app. only costs $1.99 and there is no internet connection required.

Free Rome

Although the Free Rome app itself is not free, it helps you save money by providing information about free things you can do in Rome. It has over 80 listings of free activities, including entries about free Roman museums, monuments, and festivals. The information is updated periodically and continually adds new entries for your travels. Since the price is $0.99, you can get a wealth of information for less than a dollar.

ItalyGuides Vatican Museum Tour

Often, when I explore large museums, I tend to get lost—not in the exhibits and ideas of history and art—but actually physically lost. A museum tour app then, is certainly useful, especially for a place like the Vatican. It features interactive maps, a navigation menu, suggested routes, a photo gallery, audio, soundtrack; all of these make the Vatican Museum experience easy and gratifying. The full version of this app costs $4.99, but there is also a “Lite” version available for free. The free guide still gives you the maps and navigation menu, but does not provide interactive media, and only gives information on a few of the rooms. I’d say both apps are pretty desirable.

DK Top 10 Rome

This app is an exact replica of the DK Eyewitness Top 10 guidebook for Rome. It presents maps that cover central Rome and the historic centre, bus routes, and areas of interest. With this app you also get a currency converter, insider knowledge about Rome’s ancient sites, historical buildings/locations, Roman artists, great places for children, hotels, shopping, and restaurants. If you don’t like the idea of carrying around a guidebook every day, then this app is perfect for you! Cost $7.99.

When travelling, everyone tries to keep themselves on some kind of budget. Even if we tend to get caught up in the moment and spend extravagantly while on vacation, we can still get in touch with our technological sides and take advantage of these extremely affordable and fascinating apps.

What are your favorite iPhone apps for Rome? Share in the comments.

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Now roam over to My Bella Vita for some more travel tips!

Written by Stephanie

erin :: the olive notes
May 4th, 2010
I actually was just looking at apps yesterday for our upcoming trip…but I found that Rick Steves also has a good deal of free audio tours for downloads as podcasts, which you can listen to as you’re visiting a site:

http://www.ricksteves.com/news.....r_menu.htm

Thanks so much for the tip Erin! Beats lugging a guide book around

Emily @ Maiden Voyage
May 6th, 2010
That’s a great idea! I’ve considered downloading travel apps like that for when going abroad, but I worried that it would need to connect to the Internet and that it would cost a lot. But if all the info is stored on the phone and you don’t need a connection, that would be so handy. Maybe I will try that next time…

Try it Emily, you’ll like it!

.-= Emily @ Maiden Voyage´s last blog ..Emily is Interviewed at FareCompare.com =-.

Sonya
May 8th, 2010
Love iPhone apps! Thanks, I hadn’t heard of these travel iPhone apps! Excellent travel resources.

I don’t have an iPhone yet. I’m waiting for Verizon to start offering them – then..Look out app world

.-= Sonya´s last blog ..New Sahara Desert Camping =-.

Oriana
May 11th, 2010
Hi I follow you all over the place – t-t-fb and flickr – love what you do! I just thought you’d like to know that in Tuscany there’s a free downloadable application called Tuscany+ . It’s an augmented reality app once you reach Tuscany it gives you info on restaurants hotels, museums and clubs! I like it and think it would be useful for your readers!
Oriana aka tuscanycious

Good to see you here Oriana! Thanks for the great tip for my readers…..

.-= Oriana´s last blog ..Cannoli Recipe =-.

lauren
October 22nd, 2011
Hi everyone! I’ve just visited Rome and you should definitely try this app! It’s called ROME MVR and allows to explore Rome with in a 3D graphics, but here there’s the best part.. when you’re in front of Coliseum (or any other famous building) you can see it in the camera view and then switch to see how it was when the Romans built it. This should explain better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related

Thanks for the tip Lauren.