If you're coming to Washington DC
you'll want to make sure you arrive prepared, so stick around because I have
8 must-have apps you that should download on your smartphone before you arrive.
Welcome to Trip Hacks DC. My name is Rob. I'm a tour guide in Washington DC.
If you're coming to town and looking for the best tips, tricks, and hacks for exploring the city, hit the subscribe button and if you
know somebody who's coming and could use a little help hit the share button to let them know about this video.
If you're coming to DC chances are good that at some point you're going to ride the Metro.
I personally love Metro Hero right now. It shows you the location of every single train in the Metro system
which I personally think is pretty cool.
You can also click on the station where you're located
and it will tell you how many minutes until the next train. And of course you could also click over to see if there are
any alerts or any elevator or escalator outages if that matters to you as well. And while we're on the topic
I have a video that are my 10 do's and don'ts for riding on the Metro when you're in DC.
Go ahead and click up there and you'll be able to watch that.
Ride-hailing apps. These have become pretty ubiquitous
so chances are that you have one of these already downloaded on your phone.
These ride-sharing apps got really popular a few years ago
because DC cabbies had a really
notoriously bad reputation.
Their cars were old and dirty and they would often try to rip people off.
As a side note these apps seem to have gotten
cabbies to clean up their act a bit, so if you want to hail a cab on the street, that's cool
but if you're already comfortable using Uber or Lyft
and you want to stick with what you know then go ahead and do that.
It's 2017 right now
so I have to imagine that everyone on the internet has Uber and Lyft installed on their phones at this point
But if not, I'll go ahead and leave my referral codes for both down in the description
so you can get some free rides when you come to DC.
Both Uber and Lyft have carpool options right now which can save you
a little bit of money if you're willing to share your rides with somebody else,
but I will warn that if you're in a hurry don't use these options because it can slow you down pretty considerably.
3. Smithsonian Mobile
which I highly recommend you download before
leaving your house for your trip because not only do you have to download the app but a supplemental data file that includes information about
all of the exhibits at the Smithsonian - and believe me there are a lot.
If you don't know in advance
what exhibits are out there
and you don't know what you want to see it's really easy to miss something really cool that you otherwise would have really enjoyed. There's
a full inventory of the exhibits that all of the Smithsonian museums
including the ones that are currently on display and the ones that are coming soon,
which can be especially helpful if you have a trip planned for the future. When you scroll to the bottom of each
description there's a little heart button that you can click and it'll add it to your favorites so you can easily find the ones that
you wanted to see when you come back into the app later.
4. Yelp
One of the most frequent questions that I get asked as a tour guide is: where should I eat?
Which is a really difficult question to answer without knowing your price range
or what kind of food you even like. Last year the Michelin guide published its first version for Washington DC and
twelve of our restaurants earned stars. Now, if you show up to town
and you don't already have a reservation for one of these places chances are you're not going to be eating there
but there are still a ton of great restaurants that you can walk in most nights of the week without a reservation
and get a table, and Yelp will help you find them.
Whenyou open up the app click on the little restaurant
icon. The app will use your phone's GPS to pull up a list of restaurants that are close to you. From here
you can use the filtering buttons to filter out restaurants that are either too expensive or
that are other type of cuisine that you're looking for or if you're looking for something really specific like cheap pizza
you can use the filters to find it that way.
I personally like to switch over to the map view which will show me the exact location of each of the restaurants
and I can see which ones are the closest to me,
and then I can get walking directions over to the restaurant from there
5. Citymapper.
If you've been to Europe you may have already tried out Citymapper as it's huge over in London and Paris and some other European
cities, it hasn't really caught on in the U.S.
quite yet,
but it's still an incredible app that I use all the time and think you should too. Citymapper will use your phone's GPS
To figure out exactly where you are you will tell it where you want to go.
It will then calculate a list of options for transportation,
and give you the best suggestions based on price and
time. If you choose a Metro option Citymapper will tell you how to walk to the closest station,
how to walk from the station where you're going to your final destination
and
it'll even tell you whether to sit it in the front, middle, or back of the train for the fastest transfer if you have to make
one.
6. NPS National Mall
If you visited some of the other national parks in the U.S. like Yosemite
or Yellowstone
you may have already used a National Park app. This one is just like those except for the National Mall here in Washington DC.
Probably the coolest thing about this app is the map of all the sites on the National Mall
including the ones that you know you want to see, like the Lincoln Memorial
and some other ones that you might not even know you want to see. If you use the list view you can definitely see what's
out there And then you can switch back over to the map to figure out exactly where it is
7. SpotCycle
If you're going to use Capital Bikeshare
Then you're going to want to download SpotCycle. The most
frustrating thing about using Capital Bikeshare is riding your bike all the way across town arriving at your destination and
realizing that you can end your trip because the dock is
completely full of bikes! SpotCycle can help you avoid this because you can find out in advance
if there are docks available at your destination,
and if not, you can make a back-up plan find another dock somewhat nearby that's still within walking distance and park your bike there.
8. TapIt
This is a really cool simple app that's going to save you a bunch of money when you come to Washington DC
because you're not going to have to buy bottled water every single day
before you go out. Tapitit is a project where the local water utility teamed up with a bunch of local
businesses to promote tap water as an alternative to buying bottled water when you go out.
This is a win-win because you save a bunch of money,
you don't have to buy bottled water,
and you don't produce as much waste and garbage. Now if you're worried about drinking DC
tap water, wondering if it's okay, wondering if it's safe..
I'm going to leave a link to an article in the description
about how the quality of the tap water has really improved over the last decade here. And
that's it! Thanks for watching - if you thought the video was helpful
please subscribe to the channel
as there will be many more videos like this one with tips, tricks, and hacks for your visit to Washington DC.
You can check us out on Instagram and Facebook and lastly if you're visiting Washington
and you want to take a personalized guided tour,
I am a tour guide, and you can find out what we offer by visiting TripHacksDC.com.
Thanks.
See you next time.