Traveling as a vegan can present some unique challenges—but thankfully, these helpful vegan travel apps can help you keep it plant-based no matter where your journey takes you. Finding restaurants with tasty vegan options, trying to decipher menus in other languages, and explaining to your confused server exactly what “vegan” means can definitely be frustrating. Nowadays, your phone can provide you with a quick fix in any of these situations, even if you don’t have WiFi. Here are 5 vegan travel apps that you need to download before take off!
5 Vegan Travel Apps to Keep Handy while You Travel
1. HappyCow
The Happy Cow website has been around since 1999, but now, the same amazing database of vegan restaurants worldwide is available as an app! This is one of the most popular vegan travel apps, and once you use it, you’ll see why! With Happy Cow, you can search for vegan or vegetarian restaurants in over 180 countries. You can also look up restaurants that serve meat but also provide vegan options if you’re dining with a mixed crowd. It can also show you vegan bakeries, health food stores, and coffee shops. You can read restaurant reviews, check out their star ratings, get their contact info to make a reservation, and use it to look up directions! It’s best to download this app before you even leave to help you with planning your itinerary.
2. Vegan XPress
Vegan Xpress will show you vegan options at popular chain restaurants as well as fast food places. This app is perfect for road trips because you do not need WiFi to look up your options. You can download the full database of restaurant info on to your phone, so when you’re stuck in traffic without internet and feel your stomach start to grumble, you won’t have to play any guessing games when you spot a sign for a chain restaurant coming up—just wait until you’re safely stopped and see what your choices are! It can break it all down by specific ingredients, which makes this app even more useful for vegans with food allergies. Vegan Xpress is updated regularly with new options, so make sure to download updates when they’re available.
3. Air Vegan
Air Vegan is about to become your new vegan travel companion. Ever been stuck on a long layover at a huge airport, wandering around and lugging your giant suitcase behind you in search of just one restaurant with a vegan meal? Air Vegan will show you which terminals at your airport have vegan options available. When you search for your airport, you will see a color-coded result along with terminal numbers. Green means you have lots of choices, yellow means you have a few, and red means you might be out of luck. Travel tip—check before you leave for your flight to see if you’ll need to pack snacks! If you can see that your options will be super limited at the airport, you don’t want to end up sitting at your gate with stomach grumbling as you dig into a bag of potato chips.
4. V-Cards: Vegan Abroad
If you’ve ever been to a restaurant in a country where no one speaks your language, you know that it can be tough to communicate exactly what you want—and figure out what you’ll actually be getting! As an omnivore, this can be a fun, spontaneous moment—but as a vegan, you risk ending up with animal products on your plate that you don’t want to eat! This is where the app V-Cards: Vegan Abroad comes in handy. This app contains translations of important phrases for vegans in over 100 languages. Just choose the language for the country you’re in, and a card will come up explaining exactly what vegans can and cannot eat in that language. It gets super specific, so there is no confusion over tricky ingredients like honey, fish sauce, and chicken broth.
5. Google Translate Offline
Google Translate Offline has gotten a ton of positive buzz amongst travelers of all backgrounds. It’s not marketed as a vegan travel app, but it’s vital for vegan travelers. While the translations are never quite perfect for longer chunks of text, they work just fine for short sentences or single words—like ingredients listed on a menu! That’s why the Google Translate Offline app is totally necessary for any vegan traveling to a country where they do not speak the language. Simply allow the app access to your camera, point it at a menu in a foreign language, and it will translate the words. Even if there isn’t a bilingual server to help you out, you will be able to find a delicious vegan meal!
Do you rely on any apps that help you eat vegan while you travel?
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Related: Best Vegan Travel Tips for Eating Well Anywhere
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