Rome2Rio is a service that helps you get from city to city or across a metropolitan area by connecting multiple transport modes along a route. For example, if your day trip to the Pinball Museum requires you to take a bus, metro, ferry and light rail, the app will show you all the legs, times and prices for your entire trip on one map.
Happy Cow is the secret guidebook for plant-based eaters. The app shows you a map of all the vegan and vegetarian restaurants in your location, vegetarian-friendly spots, and nearby organic markets. I use the app whenever I visit a new city and it keeps me well-nourished. It's featured all over the world.
Buy Security
Americans have a few options to get through airport checkpoints faster. U.S. citizens can apply for TSA PreCheck. The service requires security screening, including background checks and fingerprinting, usually at your local airport. But once you're approved, you can speed through security in the PreCheck priority line. It usually takes less than five minutes, and you don't have to remove your laptop or take off your shoes. The Transportation Security Administration used to occasionally grant PreCheck status to travelers it deemed “low risk,” but it recently discontinued this. Now, the only way to get PreCheck is to go through the process. It costs about $80, but many credit cards offer it as a reward, so check your card.
If you're interested in TSA PreCheck and you travel internationally a lot, you might also consider paying a little extra for Global Entry, which costs $100 and includes TSA PreCheck, making re-entering the U.S. or entering airports in other countries (77 in all) faster and easier.
A popular alternative is Clear, which offers many of the same luxuries as TSA PreCheck, except it's run by a private company rather than the U.S. government. It skips document checks and instead uses biometric scanners. Clear costs $179 per year for an individual, with discounts for adding family members. Clear continues to expand, and now has dedicated fast lanes at 57 U.S. airports.
While these options require you to register, pay a fee, and wait for approval, there are free tools you can use right now to speed up your re-entry at the end of your trip. Mobile Passport Control is an app developed by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. If you are a U.S. or Canadian citizen, you can upload all your customs declaration information to the app and present it along with your passport when entering the U.S. Mobile Passport Control can save you a lot of time if you are traveling internationally with your family, as up to 12 people can submit their customs information in one request through the app. Mobile Passport Control is available at 33 airports and ports of entry. Check the U.S. Customs website for a list. The whole process is a bit complicated (it's the government after all), but the website has clear instructions.
Packed with technology
A word of advice when traveling abroad is to bring all the power adapters you need so that you can use your electronic devices in your destination country. But we especially want to emphasize that you should bring more than one adapter: a few for your laptop and a few to charge your smaller devices. You're bound to lose at least one, but these adapters are usually pretty cheaply made and can malfunction or break unexpectedly, so having spares is very important.
Another tried-and-true tip is to put AirTags in your luggage so you can track your bag if it gets lost, stolen, or misplaced. It's great advice to follow. But if you're an Android user, AirTags don't work with your smartphone. So get a Chipolo tracker instead. The One Point ($28) fits on a keychain and is perfect for luggage, while the credit card-shaped Card Point ($35) can slip into a wallet or passport sleeve. Both can be tracked using Android's native Find My Device app. If you want to track your kids or pets, too, try Jiobit's Smart Tag, which works anywhere in the U.S. It costs $130 and requires a cheap cellular data plan to connect to the GPS, but the Jiobit will help you find your loved one if they wander off from a group tour of the ice cream factory.
Machine translation is advancing at an incredible rate, and its growth has led to an explosion of dedicated portable translators. These are a type of single-function touchscreen device that you talk to or pick up while someone is speaking and it translates that person's speech into your own native language. It's the same concept as Google Translate, but it's a dedicated device so it's faster and more powerful. A good portable translator, when held between two people talking, can have an actual conversation in two languages. We've tried a few, and our favorite is the Pocketalk Plus Voice Translator. The $290 price tag includes a global data SIM so you can stay connected to the cloud-based translation software.
