How to replace Google’s Trips app

Google’s travel app Trips is shutting down on August 5th, ceding its territory to apps such as TripIt and RoadTrippers. It’s unfortunate; Trips was a handy app for travelers, offering a quick and easy way to track your travel plans, find your saved places, and explore unfamiliar territory. You could also download your information to the app so that it would be accessible offline, very handy when you are overseas and using a temporary data plan.

Google has created a page describing all the various methods you can use to replace the features of the soon-to-be-gone Trips app. What follows are some of Google’s suggestions, with a bit of extra commentary to help you get at least some of the same functionality:

• You can use Google Maps to find restaurants, entertainment, parks, etc. in the area of your destination. This is a simple process, well-known to most Maps users: simply enter the category into your search field. But while it’s a useful feature, it can often be awkward, especially on a phone, as you zoom in and out of the map while trying to compare each possible destination and figure out their relative distances from where you are.
• If you have the foresight to do…