5 Ways to Use Your Smartphone While Traveling

Smartphones.  What would we do without them?  In ways it is good and in ways it is bad how dependent we have become with them.  But that’s a whole other blog post for another day!

Today for my 31 Days of Travel Secrets I’m going to talk about how I use my smartphone camera when I travel.  And boy do I use it a lot!  In a way I use it to help me remember things (Kevin would say that I need all the help I can get with that!).

1.  Parking Ticket

For instance, when I park at the airport, they always hand me a little piece of paper with my location written on it that I’m suppose to keep track of until I get home.  Yeah, right!  Instead of trying to keep track of that sheet, I just snap a quick picture of it so it’s right there on my phone when I get back.  Easy as that!

2.  Hotel Address

Another thing that I take a picture of is my hotel’s business card.  That way I have the address and phone number handy in case I need it.  Most of the time a taxi driver will know where he’s going, but just in case it’s easier for me to find the picture than remember where I put the business card in my purse!

3.  Restaurants

Obviously when you travel you’re more than likely going to be eating out quite a bit.  I like to grab business cards if a restaurant is really good, good enough to make me want to come back again, but I always try and snap a picture of the outside of the restaurant so I can at least remember the name of it!

4.  Delicious Food

And speaking of restaurants, this is my favorite tip that I was told recently.  It seems that most restaurants are on the dark side when it comes to lighting.  So in order to get a decent picture of your food you need to use your flash.  But that doesn’t usually make the food look to appetizing.  So the key to getting a good shot of your food is to have a helper.  Your helper will turn on the flashlight on their phone and hold it up above your food to light it up.  Then you take a picture of the food without the flash.  The flash has a more harsh light than the flashlight that is held up higher.  Go ahead.  Try it next time you eat out!

5.  Informative Signs

When you are out and about doing some sightseeing, often times there are signs that you can read with information about the place you are at.  You may want to remember some of that later, so I will usually just snap a picture of it so I don’t have to take the time to write it down.  One example was recently when I was on the Great Wall of China, this little sign was posted along the wall.  It had some key information on it, plus it was raining, so it was easier to just take a quick picture than dig out a pen and paper.

So those are the top five ways that I use my smartphone camera while traveling!  Do you have any other ideas that I can add to my smartphone camera uses list?  If so please leave a comment!  Thanks!

This is part of the #write31days blogging challenge.  For a list of all the post, check out my Pinterest board or this post!  If you have any other neat travel secrets or tips let me know!  Have a great day!