DO YOU OWN A PHONE AND DO YOU HAVE A MAP APP?

honestly, i often hate apps and it took me a few months for kyle to get me on board with what i'm writing about to day. so if you have that mindset, please bear with me!

navigating a new city is hard. add in a packed agenda with no international data plan and it can be very overwhelming and expensive. don't get me wrong, we love a good old fashioned paper map and still use them often, but when trying to efficiently get to all the right stops we have found google maps to be somewhat life changing. we, [among others] are impressed with where they have taken the experience and how well they are integrating with international travel. not only are their maps far more accurate & reliable, the interface is much nicer and they seem committed to travel planning as they just released google trips. 

3 REASONS GOOGLE MAPS ARE DIFFERENT THAN OTHER MAPS:

• STARRING with this functionality, it's extremely easy to save & remember restaurants, bars, museums, hotels, trail heads, and more – and then see how close/far they all are from each other. we also use it to save the places we stumble upon and end up loving. all you need is wifi to save a location, and from then on it will be saved on your map even if you don't have wifi. 
   
• OFFLINE MAPS avoiding international data charges, they let you download for a defined area. it will keep all your starred places and street names/metro stops/etc so it functions as a modernized city map. you'll be able to get around just like you were on wifi. 
   
• AUTOMATIC SYNCING email/airbnb/hotel bookings/etc. – these all find their way to your map, too. example: i got lost in seville the one time i tried to go out alone [sigh] – and opened my map to see what i could find. and there was a little star that said "seville airbnb". my google had already synced it to my offline map and i was able to get home no problem.

E X A M P L E  F R O M  P A R I S:
 

as you will see on our international travel guides, we have made maps for each city with all of our favorite places that you can easily download to your google account to have on your phone. simple as that! some photos below to help better walk you through the process.