Unless you happy to incur often astronomical data charges, or buy a separate foreign SIM for your phone, going online is out of the question, so the trend now is to download everything you need in advance.

There are a bunch of offline map and travel guide apps available for Paris, but of the bunch that I tried, Ulmon was by far the very best. With a super detailed, zoomable map, with thousands of tappable points of interest, bringing up cached Wikipedia articles within the app getting around the city is a breeze. The best feature though is that a remarkably accurate locator, pinpointing what street you’re on within seconds, and thanks to the iPhone’s compass, it’ll tell you which way you’re facing too.

Thanks to an extensive directory of restaurants, bars, shops, theatres, cinemas and more, if you’re short of something to do it’ll map what’s around you, while you can also bookmark a to-do list of picks if you want to plan your stay. With a Metro map too, I don’t know what we would have done without the Ulmon app, and gone at last are the huge paper maps you used to have to carry around in your pocket, and just pulling out your phone instead, you can start to look like a local. Oh yeah, and it’s free.

Ulmon for iOS is available in the App Store here: https://itunes.apple.com/no/app/ulmon-paris/id316996121