The Ultimate Guide to Essential Apps in Paris
When moving to a new country, we often experience culture shock in one form or another—doors that need buttons to unlock from the inside, extremely dysfunctional bathrooms, cheese as dessert, and of course, the deeply frustrating process of adapting a smartphone. It sounds like a cliché, but in the modern age we need technology to communicate, learn a language, scout restaurants, and just generally get around. Smartphones are essential, and what is a smartphone without its apps? So why not use some of that iPhone space to make your time abroad a little smoother, and perhaps a little more fun? We've put together a useful list of free apps that might make your life in Paris a little better.
Whatsapp Messenger (Or some similar internet based texting or calling app, like Viber or Pinger)
These are pretty obvious and most students already use Whatsapp, but it has the benefit of being completely international and useful for communicating with people at home if they don’t have a Facebook.
This currency converter might be more depressing than entertaining, but if you’re budgeting in American dollars (or any other form of currency), you can easily convert to other currencies.
Nothing ruins a night out like having no access to a bathroom. This app will direct towards the nearest public restroom.
This is a basic French radio app which, with Internet access, offers a database of several hundred stations of various genres. If you’re not a radio listener, it's probably not that exciting, but it can be useful when trying to inundate oneself with the language.
In a similar vein, Duolingo is great for practicing basic French grammar and vocabulary. It can be slow and repetitive, but the vocabulary sinks in.
This is the classic metro navigation map. It’ll map routes for you using the various transportation systems. As a bonus, there’s an offline map, which can be useful when you first get to the city and don’t want to look like an idiot with an enormous fold out.
This transportation app is helpful to both avid and casual Vélib' users in Paris. If you want to rent a bike from Paris' bike sharing system, the app tells you where you can find or park bikes and how many available.
As the name implies, this app handily directs you to favorite pastry and dessert shops around the city and briefly describes what is best at each location.
With this bar app, you can look up happy hours around the city and the various prices and deals on any given night.
This app is gold—at least for students on the verge of going broke. It gives users a rundown of free concerts, cheap drinks and restaurants, and upcoming festivals in the city.
This app can plan and propose an itinerary for you on any given day, always offering new choices.
This app offers a list of all the places that serve coffee for 1 euro or less.
Of course, a phone only takes you so far, and visitors to Paris should make sure to be spontaneous and make some unplanned trips around the city—just make sure to use your RATP app.
