I love Paris. My soul belongs to London and I know that city better than any other city in the world, but my heart opens up when I walk around Paris.
I had the opportunity to visit the city at Christmas and even got to spend some time at Disneyland Paris and because it was a surprise visit, and because I didn't have much time I figured I should download a few apps to maximize the visit.
here are the ones I used the most, and that you should get for your next visit.
Toilet Finder
Ok, so before anything fancy like a bar or Resturant locator, make sure you grab this app. It will save your life! Especially in Paris where they have these booths in the street and you can run into them if, for some unknown reason, you are chased down by a bunch of skinheads with chains and knives the length of their arm.
Now I’m not saying that is a likely scenario, and most people will probably use this app for, you know, find a place to pee. I just want you to have it in case something strange does happen.
As long as nothing strange happen this app will find you a nearby toilet and point out if it’s free or will cost you. It will also rank it. We used it tons and it was wonderful.
Toilet Finder works not only in Paris but all around the world and it’s just great.
Took this screenshot when I was already back home... 3m meters from that toilet
Secrets de Paris
This is a very cool little app that does two things:
A) every day it will tell you about a “secret” location in Paris you should not miss
B) Show you secret locations around you.
These location can be anything from a special sweeping pool you can sneak into, to the location of the chair that Moliere sat on when he last preformed “Le Malade Imaginaire” before passing away.
This app also helped me find a resturant where you do not order from a menu, but instead you choose 2 adjectives and get a surprise…
Free with in-app unlock of all the locations
Yes, again took this screenshot when I was home... 3284Km from the location
Tour Eiffel HD
This functional (yet not very stylish) app is great if you are going to visit the famous tower. Actually, it’s great even you don’t want to visit the tower but you want to know more about it. It has tons of information both as text and audio so you can learn about the history and also about various parts of the tower itself.
The app asks you to go and look at points of interest in the tower and tells you about them. I loved walking around the tower with.
It has an additional panorama function that allows you to look around at the view and understand what it is that you are looking at.
On one hand, it’s an image (with a compass so it will show you the right information) so you can use it even when you are not there. On the other hand, it would have been nicer to have this displayed as Augmented Reality.
Wait Time for Disneyland Paris
So, this one is very specific and very useful. Based on crowed-sourcing, this app will tell you how long you should expect to wait in line for each attraction in the park. In the early hours it won’t be that accurate but late morning and until the end of the day you can trust it.
We managed to plan our way far better with it, and there were times when we used it to launch into a sprint when we saw that one of the attractions (Phantom Manor) was down to 15 minutes.
It will also tell you bout closed attractions (Disneyland Paris is working on the changes to Discovery land onto Star Wars land. A change that is already in place in Disneyland itself. This means that the Star Tours attraction is closed).
Paris Map offline
This app will give let you navigate the streets of Paris even if you don’t have a data plan. You will have the whole map but also tons of information like point of interest, hotels, attractions, things to do and more.
The design is not great, but the information is solid.
