The Top City Guide Apps

So you don’t have to buy that city guide book at the airport.

We have perfectly good iPhone with us, but we’re not using them. OK, so we don’t have an Internet connection (although I could on my old iPhone 4 if I wanted to buy a local Turkish SIM card, which is cheap). But what I’d like is a city guide app for Istanbul. Something I could use around town to see, for example:

1. Transportation: how can I get to town from the airport?
2. Hotels: if we didn’t already have one, which ones are good for us?
3. To Do: I’m in the old town and have one day. What should I do if I’m the sort of person who likes this, that and the other. Maybe the app even “knows” me by now and has a good idea of what I’d like.
4. Shopping: where to buy what.
5. Food: restaurants near me, cheapy ones, splurgy ones, rooftop ones.
6. Mini Guides: what if we only have 3 days? What if were without kids this trip? What if I love industrial museums?

I don’t know what it needs, I don’t write city guide books (oh wait, actually, I did). But isn’t this exactly what apps are all about?

Editor’s note: I’m writing this post here in Istanbul and we’ll probably go buy a paper guidebook in the morning. Partly because I don’t have any better ideas? I’m a little rusty on traveling to places that I know absolutely nothing about. So I’m going to publish this post without any actual, uh, you know, helpful ideas. But more that I see a need and I can rest assured that there’s something out there that would be great for me, I just need to find it.

So here they are, the top 5 city (or maybe country or whatever) guide apps.

This will be updated as, well, I update it. 

Trip Advisor