How to use technology & still rest on vacation

A totally crazy tip to truly rest while on vacation: Delete any and all social media and email apps from your phone. Delete anything else that isn’t directly relevant to enjoying your vacation.

Secret: All those apps are in your account. You can re-download them when you get home with no issue.

But Sarah, why not just shut the phone off?

Great question.

Depending on the vacation, shutting the phone off entirely may be a great way to go. For others, keeping the phone on can save time and make the vacation more enjoyable – without being tied to your phone for typical daily notifications.

On our most recent vacation, I used my phone a considerable amount, but not for anything that was draining to me (just the battery, haha). We were in the greater Los Angeles area and had a general idea of what we were doing or where we were going.

By strategically using apps, we could stay flexible with planning (code: have a very minimal plan and make it up as we went – that’s adventure, right?). Here’s what we used:

Essential Apps to Use and/or Install While Traveling:

• Google Maps (or Apple Maps, if that’s your preference)
• Yelp
• A web browser (to look up those awesome restaurants and shopping, etc)
• Evernote or another Notes App – where you have lists of all the places to go and things to do stored ahead of time.
• Transit App – A friend just told me about this one – I haven’t used it yet, but have heard it’s amazing. It will show all types of public transportation and the best way to get where you want to go.
• Best Parking – This one shows parking lots and garages nearby, whether or not they’re open and current rates. I use this one in my own city when I need to park in areas I’m not super familiar with.
• Kindle / Oyster – For obvious recreational reading purposes.
• A relevant airline-specific app. Fly Delta was great for checking in and keeping up to date on our flight status.

As a bonus, I had limited wi-fi access, so the temptation to download apps I was missing was much much lower than it would have been. There was one time I caved and logged onto Facebook from a mobile browser, but overall did that was pretty good.

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