Best Apps for Seeing the World Whilst in Lockdown
The coronavirus pandemic continues to keep us in lockdown, and while it’s vitally important for us to keep safe and stay at home as much as possible, it’s also natural to feel a bit stir-crazy at times, especially if you’ve had to cancel a holiday abroad.
While it’s unclear how long it will be before we can enjoy foreign travel again, the good news is that your smartphone holds the key to enabling you to experience a wealth of exciting places from the comfort of your own sofa.
Here’s our round-up of the best apps for ‘travelling’ the world, even when you’re stuck at home.
The best apps for exploring the world
Trover
Trover is one of the best apps for globe-trotters, enabling users to share their amazing experiences with others. Okay, so you might not be able to visit Hong Kong in person, nor relax on a Caribbean beach in real life. But thanks to Trover’s travel community, you can live vicariously through other people’s photographs. If nothing else, it’ll give you some great inspiration for your next holiday when travel is possible again.
To find out more about Trover, click here.
Triposo
Touted as a ‘smart travel guide’, Triposo has a wealth of information about numerous locations around the world. Each destination covers all the information you could ever want to know, including a brief history of the place, what attractions there are, and even some details about the local hotels (in case you want to stay there in the future).
The Triposo website also has plenty of travel guides for you to peruse, if you prefer to view the information on your laptop or tablet.
Findery
Findery is a great app for getting some real insight into what a place is like. It’s a community-led app, which relies on contributors to share their ‘stories’ about the destinations they’ve visited, and what others can expect if they choose to go.
Even better, there is a wealth of content to browse through, to make you feel as though you’ve travelled to far-flung lands, without moving at all! Learn more about the app here.
Explore.org
Explore.org is an organisation that focuses on those who have devoted their lives to great causes, in many locations across the globe. The online library includes over 250 incredible films, and more than 30,000 photographs. It provides a great opportunity to not only travel to different countries via your smart device, but also to get inspired. Who knows, it might even encourage you to help a charitable cause during your next holiday – such as volunteering in a school, or working with rescue-animals.
Get started on your (virtual) journey right here.
Google Earth
Perhaps the most well-known travel-focused app in the world, Google Earth gets you up close and personal with virtually every location on the planet. It lets you wander the streets of some of the world’s most famous cities, and explore remote locations. Ready to travel to snowy Greenland one minute, then tropical Barbados the next? Google Earth makes it incredibly easy to do so.
Would you like to inject some glamour into your travels (from home)? Instagram is the app to turn to if you want to see picture-perfect photos of every location in the world. Simply search using the hashtag function, and you can tune into a treasure-trove of user-generated content; some produced by the biggest influencers out there.
If you haven’t already downloaded Instagram, you can do so here (Android) or here (iOS).
Google Destinations
Destinations is Google’s clever travel planner, and just the thing you need when you’re fantasising about your next getaway break. Like a real-life travel agent, it helps you compile several different itineraries (for all those trips you’ll be taking in the future), and provides a huge amount of information about locations around the world. You can even view destinations according to popularity.
And if you’ve got a VR headset…
Virtual reality (VR) technology means you can visit distant places without venturing from your front door. If you haven’t got a VR headset there are a lot of cheap options available, such as Google Cardboard, which does the job well without blowing a hole in your lockdown budget.
Apps like Facebook 360 let you explore exotic locations without restriction, just by moving your head. And, if you feel like travelling further than you ever have before, there are even apps to let you fly into space. There are also apps for relaxing in forests and by the sea, or (if you’re a thrill-seeker), riding on a rollercoaster. Whatever form of travel activity you’re into, you’re likely to find that it’s available to download.