Best Apps for the Via Francigena

The Best Apps for the Via Francigena

We kept saying a joke until it became an old joke, “How did Sigeric make it to Rome without these apps?”

We tried many apps during the Via Francigena (VF) and found these to work the best for us. These apps helped us plan the overall pilgrimage, plan our daily stage, keep us on the proper track, and find a place to stay each night. We are highlighting the best of the apps that worked for us.

Planning Apps for the Via Francigena

We did two kinds of planning, before-the-trip planning and daily planning during the pilgrimage, and we found both Gronze.com and the official Via Francigena website to be useful.

Both provide maps and a breakdown of the stages, with distances between each stage, and a difficulty factor for the stage. This information was useful to plan the time and distance we needed to walk from a starting point. During our planning, we were able to trade off the number of days for our walk, with the starting point.

The Via Francigena website, and its associated mobile app, gave good historical information, information about obtaining the Credential and Testimonium. It also has links to Tour Operators and Guides if you desire that assistance. The site also contains downloadable gpx tracks that you can import into the navigation app of your choice.

Gronze.com was more useful in planning our actual walks. It provides a map of each stage with intermediate towns along (or near) the Via Francigena route. There were two really useful bits of information about the intermediate towns, the distance between the towns and a list of accommodations in those towns.

The official VF itinerary has stages that average 24 km (15 miles) apart. We wanted to average 16 km (10 miles), so were often referring to the Gronze maps and distances to plan our daily stages to stay at these intermediate towns. One such stage was Altopascio to San Miniato. This was our first full day of walking, so we didn’t want to jump right into a 29 km ( 18 mile) walk. We wanted to ease into it a bit. The Gronze map made it easy to plan to stay at Fucecchio.

Referring to the screenshot below, Gronze.com tells us that the distance to Fucecchio is 3.4 + 4.4 + 6.5 + 5.0 = 19.3 km (12 miles). The distance between towns is listed on the map, Altopascio to Villa Campanile is 3.4, another 4.4 onto Galleno, plus 6.5 to Ponte a Cappiano, and so on.

Gronze also provides easy to access list of accommodations at the locations, making it easy to find a room. Each accommodation listed has a link to contact them directly or even book in booking.com. For our planning this day, we actually wanted to stay at Ponte a Cappiano, but alas, there weren’t any rooms available on that day, so we went onward to Fucecchio.

In addition, Gronze.com provided all of this info in an easy to use manner. This ease of use made it the go-to app for us to plan our daily stages.

Gronze has a couple of downsides though, while on the Via Francigena. First, it’s a web application, not a full mobile app. To fully use it, you need to have access to the internet. Internet access isn’t too much of a problem in Italy, most hotels and restaurants have free wifi, just ask. Or you could use a data plan, like we did.

The other downside is that Gronze.com is written in Spanish. The chrome browser has an automatic translate feature, or you could use a translate app if needed. Otherwise, the map is still readable and the Booking.com app automatically translates as well.

Best App to Keep you on Track for the Via Francigena

The Sloways app is available for both iPhone and Android, and it’s made in collaboration with the official Via Francigena app. Both apps have very similar features and essentially the same content. The maps are the same and the descriptions are the same.

We chose the Sloways app because it worked much better when in offline mode. Both apps allow you to download the maps so you don’t need to be connected to the internet. This feature saves your data usage when away from wifi and also in the places without cell coverage. Unfortunately, the official VF app often failed to read the downloaded map when offline. We found the Sloways app to be more reliable in this situation.

The official VF app does cover the full Via Francigena, from Canterbury to Rome (and beyond), while the Sloways app covers only Italy.

Overview

Navigation

Stay On Track

Best Apps for Finding Accommodations on the Via Francigena

We used the Booking.com mobile app almost exclusively to book rooms.

Booking.com is integrated with Gronze.com, the app we used for planning. In Gronze.com, you can plan your walk for the day and directly open Booking.com for the accommodations in your destination.

If the place you choose from Gronze.com is not available, the Booking.com app will give you other available rooms nearby.

The app automatically translates into English (or any language), which is helpful to read the amenities and reviews. It also converts the prices to US Dollars (or any currency). This app made it easy for us to interact with Italian hosts.

We were happy with all of the rooms we chose this trip. Booking.com made it easy to trade off distance from the Via Francigena, price, and customer reviews.

One area of difficulty with Booking.com was finding the address, directions, and contact number for the hotel once we arrived to the town. The Booking.com app seems to be optimized to booking a place to stay, but it was more difficult to get the address of the place where we had the reservation.

But, TripIt is designed exactly for this purpose.

TripIt was more user friendly for finding the hotel each night, address and contact info.

TripIt makes an automatic itinerary of the whole trip, flights, trains, hotels, rental car, and puts everything all in one place. Just like travel agents used to provide.

TripIt does this automatically by scanning your email for the booking confirmations from these sources, and presents the information in a daily sequence.

One click on a hotel entry gives you the address, and a second click opens that address in the mapping app.

TripIt also made it easy to see which nights we had already booked, and which nights that we had to find a place. We generally booked the next night ahead, but for busy places, like Rome, we booked further ahead.

The reservation in TripIt also gives you the confirmation number in case that is needed.

Staying in Touch during the Via Francigena

Airalo makes it easy to install and maintain an eSim, so you can use mobile data across Europe. We enjoyed the ease of use of the Mamma Mia plans, which work only in Italy, because they were less expensive that EU-wide plans.

Most of the hosts and hotels we stayed used WhatsApp to communicate. WhatsApp uses either wifi or mobile data, making it compatible with Airalo data-only plans.

Translating Italian (or French)

The Microsoft Translator app makes it possible to communicate in another language, in real time. It provides three ways of translating from any language to another.

You can choose the camera icon and take a picture of written words, like a sign or a menu in the restaurant. We found many uses for this, especially with signage outside of historical places, like ancient churches, that describe the history and cultural significance, but not in English.

The keyboard entry was useful when sending or receiving messages in Italian. Copy and paste the text to translate.

One really cool usage is the microphone. It listens and automatically translates on the fly. This was useful when we interacted with Italian people that did not speak English. The nearby screenshot shows an interaction.

La pianificazione del viaggio è sicuramente più facile con le app di quanto non fosse ai tempi di Sigerico. Speriamo che questa recensione delle app di viaggio ti aiuti nel tuo pellegrinaggio. Grazie app traduttore! (Travel planning is certainly easier with apps than it was in Sigeric’s time. We hope this review of travel apps helps you on your pilgrimage. Thank you translator app!)