When traveling, your BlackBerry can be your friend. As long as you have cellular signal, you can use it to look up information you might need as you settle into your destination. This can come from the web, or from one of dozens of BlackBerry apps. Today we’ll go through a few essentials you should have on your BlackBerry if you plan to travel. BlackBerry Travel 
We start with the grand poobah of BlackBerry travel apps. In the past few years Research In Motion has pumped out a number of apps under its own banner. These are mostly for function over form — you won’t find any call blocking apps in here or anything of that nature. What you will find are apps that help with basic business issues, such as social networking and conference calling. They also have BlackBerry Travel, which is something that most users should have installed. Unlike a number of itinerary managers, BlackBerry Travel also allows you to book your arrangements right from the app. From there it populates an itinerary form, which lets you know where you’ll be and when. Even if you don’t book through the app, BlackBerry Travel recognizes confirmation emails and automatically pulls information from them into your itinerary. Most other apps require you to forward the confirmation email to a separate email address. Even beyond all this, BlackBerry Travel performs many functions of travel apps that cost up to $50 per year. It lets you know if there are any gaps in your schedule — a tough-to-make connection, an underbooked hotel stay, a rental car pickup that isn’t on the right day. It also has bells and whistles such as weather reports, currency converters, and a world clock. Yes, BlackBerry Travel is free, and you can get it in App World. It’s definitely something that will benefit any travel, whether occasional or frequent. It also gets a bump above similar apps such as Kayak and WorldMate, because of its easy integration. CheapTickets 
Sometimes you need to book — FAST. It might not be a common occasion, but it might crop up every once in a while. Maybe at this point you don’t have BlackBerry Travel installed. Maybe you don’t like the app. Whatever the case, there is an alternative. CheapTickets doesn’t actually have a mobile app. Instead, it runs a web app, similar to many Google services. This mobile app works as well as any downloadable app, without the downloading, so you can get right to your trip booking. The advantage of CheapTickets is right in the name: cheap flights. All of the cheap flight deals available on the website are also available via the web app — that’s the whole idea, really. You can search through and then make your purchase right from your BlackBerry browser. This is even better for BlackBerry 6 and 7 users, since the browser is much improved for them. The best idea here is to compare the prices between BlackBerry Travel and CheapTickets. If you find a better deal with the latter you can just book as normal. Then BlackBerry Travel will recognize those confirmation emails and create your itinerary. Two great services, working together. Hit them up at http://m.cheaptickets.com/. Trainline Tickets 
Flights aren’t the only way we travel. Even when we do fly, we might take shorter trips within the bigger trip. Yes, I’m talking about train travel. It’s the way many people get around normally, and it’s a great way to expand your trip destination. It might even make the most sense for travel on business trips. The Trainline Tickets app can make any train travel much easier. The app couldn’t be simpler. You search for trains in an area, and then view schedules. From there you can see ticket terms — you don’t want to purchase tickets that might expire soon — and then you can book right from the app. It might not be something that a regular commuter would use, but someone who is in, say, New York and wants to get to Philadelphia, but doesn’t want to fly, could do well with an app like this. You can get Trainline Tickets in App World for free. Urbanspoon 
When we’re on the road, we all want a good bite to eat. After all, rare is the home cooked meal while traveling. Yet we’re often stuck when checking out local joints. The best ones are often not the most obvious. If we want to avoid eating at Applebee’s, we have to find a different way to search for restaurants. While there’s always Yelp, but the Urbanspoon app is actually a bit better on the BlackBerry platform. As you might expect, it uses your GPS to find restaurants around you, giving you ratings and reviews from users and professional critics. It even has a slot machine feature, so you can randomize your eating. Yes, it’s free, so you might as well go grab the Urbanspoon app from App World. Navita Translator 
You might remember Navita Translator from our list of top free BlackBerry apps. It’s still around, and it still has all of the same great features. It’s pretty basic, really. You just input something in some language — it recognizes over 50 — and it will spit it out in another. The output languages are limitd to English, Portugese, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Russian. So even if you want to translate English into another language, you still have a sufficient list. You can also share your translations via various methods, including Twitter, email, and PIN messages. Get Navita Translator from App World. There is actually another useful BlackBerry translating app, though a bit newer than Navita. FancyTran brings a few features to the table, including pronunciation and speech recognition. It also integrates with BBM, so you can take your translations to a social level. It’s definitely I would recommend checking out, even if you’re not traveling abroad. It’s fun to play with in its own right. Get FancyTran from App World.
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