Em Casalena
Last updated:
Ooh-la-la! Fall in Love with Paris with These 8 Travel Apps
Paris: the City of Lights, the capital of France and one of the best places in the world to fall in love.
Everyone and their brother would love to travel to Paris.
If you’re reading this, that probably means you’re already planning your trip. Congratulations!
Between booking your flights and finding places to stay, you may not have even thought about downloading a few Paris-specific apps for your trip.
Why would you, anyway? Who needs special apps for a trip overseas?
The answer is… everybody who travels.
This list of Paris travel apps will make your trip so much easier and safer.
Don’t believe me? Let’s break down why these apps are worth taking up extra space on your phone.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Why Should I Download Paris Travel Apps for My Trip?
You really aren’t wasting space on your phone, here. Paris travel apps could literally be lifesavers on your excursion.
- Navigate Paris’s confusing streets. Paris is a big city that stretches 40.7 square miles. You’ll need some help navigating the city, especially if you haven’t traveled there before. Navigation apps designed specifically for Paris travelers will make your trip way more stress-free.
- Find important spots quickly. Once you step out of your hotel room into the morning sunlight of Paris, you won’t want to stop exploring! We get it. Still, it’ll be crucial to be able to locate local public bathrooms, restaurants and pick-up spots for trolleys and buses while you’re out adventuring. This list of apps can help.
- Communicate in French. Not exactly fluent in French yet? That’s okay, and it certainly shouldn’t stop you from visiting this beautiful city! Translation apps and language learning apps can help you read French text and speak with French people.
Ooh-la-la! Fall in Love with Paris with These 8 Travel Apps
Paris Metro
Unless you’ve saved up a pretty penny to Uber around Paris for the duration of your trip, you’re going to need to figure out the Paris metro system.
This official app makes navigating the somewhat complicated metro system easy and painless. And it’s free. That’s about as painless as it gets!
Paris Metro contains the official map of the Paris metro system and a user-friendly route planner to help you get around. You can even find local attractions within the app to save time trying to figure out which stop to get off at.
Offline English Map of Paris
Considering you’re visiting a very tourist-driven city, you may assume you’ll see English everywhere.
But that’s not necessarily the case. Especially if you want to explore outside of Paris’s main tourist strips for an authentic experience.
If your French isn’t great, this could be a huge issue when trying to navigate the city.
Offline English Map of Paris is here to save the day with an easy-to-use mapping interface, complete with English navigation.
The GPS connection is super accurate, but if you need to save data, the mapping system is available offline, as well.
Google Translate
Google Translate always seems to make it onto lists of amazing apps. How could it not? This free translation app is loaded with features that are perfect for the international traveler.
You can take photos with your phone’s camera to translate the visible text within it. You can listen to audio translations to communicate one-on-one with a French speaker.
A lot of the app’s features work offline. Plus, Google Translate is a simple, clean and dependable translation app that won’t be a hassle to use.
Paris Travel Guide and Offline City Map
Paris Travel Guide and Offline City Map is a user-friendly travel companion for your big trip.
This app has a ton of offline maps, various types of travel information and in-depth reviews of popular tourist destinations in the city.
With this app, you can plan your trip from start to finish. Access hotel and bed and breakfast bookings. It’s rare to find such a content-packed app for free, but Paris Travel Guide doesn’t cost a penny to use.
French-English Translator
Sometimes all you need is a cut and dry, ultra-simple French-to-English translator.
This app from Pro Languages delivers translations without any fancy-shmancy bells and whistles. With this app, you just get a simple, accurate translation app for French.
You can translate words and sentences, copy and paste bulk text to translate and expect an ultra-fast response. No standing around awkwardly waiting for your message to be translated.
French English Translator is free to use but does contain some pesky ads.
Paris Guided Tours
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see the big tourist sites in Paris. Who doesn’t love the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Notre Dame?
There are a ton of guided tours you can take to see these spots—so many that it may be a bit overwhelming to find the perfect one.
Fret not! Paris Guide Tours makes it so much easier to create your own perfect tour.
And the app acts as your guide!
This user-friendly app compiles different walking itineraries and tons of quality travel information about Paris. This app works entirely offline, so you won’t get lost in the middle of a trip because of a bad connection.
Paris Guide Tours is free to download but includes in-app purchases.
Toilets in Paris
It’s all in the name. This app helps you find public toilets all around Paris.
This may not seem like a major need. But imagine being out to explore the city, a two-hour bus ride away from your hotel—and realizing you have to go to the bathroom.
Instead of wandering through the streets of Paris trying to remember how to ask where a bathroom is in French, go ahead and download this app.
Citymapper
Citymapper is the transit app every traveler should download, regardless of your destination.
By using Citymapper, travelers can check nearby bus and train departures, look at rates and fares, find the fastest routes possible and receive alerts when different lines are disrupted or canceled. If you want to bike around the city, Citymapper can help you find rental bicycles, as well.
The app also provides clear, concise step-by-step instructions for getting to your destination. This feature is invaluable if you aren’t used to the hustle and bustle of Paris or with the French language.
Citymapper also has a few offline maps that you can use to save data.
The only downfall to this app is that it only covers around 50 cities worldwide. This isn’t a big deal if you’re just traveling to Paris. But if you plan to travel to some of the smaller cities and villages in France, Citymapper may not offer much help.
Who knew there were so many useful apps to download for visiting Paris?
You probably didn’t know a trip to Paris could get any better. But with these travel apps, your Paris vacation just went from good to amazing!
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Em Casalena is a published author, freelance writer and music columnist. They write about a lot of stuff, from music to films to language.
