10 essential iPad and iPhone apps for your next road trip

When you’re about to hit the road, you need to look at your iPad or iPhone as a Swiss Army Knife: a device to load up with the essential tools that allow you to rise to any challenge. Here are 10 apps I won’t leave him without:

1. TripAdvisor: To check out reviews of any hotel you are thinking of booking. Don’t just look at the overall rating: read the comments to figure out whether the kinds of complaints people have are the kinds of things that are likely to bug you, too, or conversely, whether the things people love are the things you’re looking for.
2. Yelp: To find the nearest and best restaurants, food stands, ice cream, book stores or drug store for an emergency ibuprofen stop.
3. iExit: Look up which shops and restaurants are available at upcoming exits on the interstate.
4. Skype: To save on phone charges if you are traveling outside your coverage area; make calls when you’re in a wifi hotspot instead.
5. Audible: To download and listen to audiobooks, if you can’t find what you want on the iTunes store.
6. OpenTable: To make reservations at the restaurants you identify on Yelp.
7. Evernote: To view the travel guide you’ve cleverly compiled for yourself from online resources snipped using Evernote’s web clipper.
8. OffMaps: To download maps that will work when you are out of 3G range, or if connectivity is overloaded (as happened to us in New York). You have to download the specific maps for the places you’re visiting so make sure you do that before your connection cuts out.
9. Facebook: To quickly upload and share photos and videos from your road trip (which you can’t do by simply using Safari on your iPhone or iPad, because there is no way to browse to your phone/pad’s photos). Just make sure you’ve set your Facebook privacy settings so that you’re comfortable with who is seeing those uploaded images.
10. Klexi: To download movies and TV shows from your computer onto your tablet for offline viewing.