Creating travel maps for smart phones
Hey guys, I've been planning a trip for Italy and recently discovered a website, Stay.com, that lets you create maps of various cities in the world. I love the idea of this because I can plot all the sites I want to see, my hotel, and all the various restaurants that I would like to check out and have gotten good recommendations. The biggest pro in my eyes is that I can download these maps for offline use on my smart phone. I figure that way no matter where I'm at, I can find myself on the map and see which restaurants I'm close to and how to get to the next site, etc. The only problem is that this website lets you create maps for only a set number of cities that it has already created its own guides for. So I've created maps for Florence and Rome, but I can't for Siena and Orvieto.
Does anyone know of any other website/app that would allow me to create maps for offline use? I should point out that I have an Android, so it would have to work with that. I did find OsmAnd, but that one seems really technical and not nearly as easy to use as Stay.com. Any suggestions?
Teresa
Chicago 10/20/12
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Teresa, google maps now lets you download to your phone maps that you can use offline. I know google maps also allows for some personal customization, but I've never tried that myself so I can't tell you how it worked. You'll need to update your google maps app to a newer one to get the option to save the map for offline use.
Since I'm able to use 3g data while traveling, I use google maps from my desktop, and "star" restaurants, museums, etc I want to go to. It's really handy, and if the above poster is right and you can access that map now offline, it would work great even without a data connection on your smartphone.
Ooh, that sounds like a great solution! Thanks for the tip, guys!
Well, you can indeed create your own Google maps and save pointers on it, and you can indeed save those maps for offline use. Sadly, the offline maps do not keep those markers. It's still the best options I can find for Orvieto and Siena, though. The offline maps do keep Google's labels, so I can see where my hotels are and where the major sites are and some restaurants. You just have to zoom in really close to see them, alas. It's something, but I'm still looking for a better option, if anyone has an idea!
On my last trip to Italy, I bought the Cartographer app for my iTouch and it allowed me to save all my google maps with markers on them. It worked great, just make sure you download the maps while you are on a wifi connection and zoom in so it stores it all, and then you have access to your custom maps offline. was especially helpful when i was in a neighborhood and wanted a snack or meal, i could look on my map for places i'd pre-researched.