Last Saturday my wife and I traveled to NYC to see the Phantom of the Opera. Here are some of the ways we used our iPhones to assist us on the trip.

Prior to leaving I located parking garages near the Majestic Theater and emailed the directions from Google Maps to my iPhone. This way I would have the link on my phone and I would only need to touch it in the email and the directions would open up in the map application. 

I used the camera on my iPhone to take some pictures of the theater and email them to family and friends. 

After the play I used Yelp and Siri to read reviews on restaurants in the area. This was useful because it was raining very hard in the city and we wanted to limit our time walking around trying to find a good place to eat. We settled on John's Pizzeria. They make delicious thin crust pizza. It is located directly across the street from the Majestic Theater. 

While at dinner one of our daughters called us to tell us that the power had gone off at home. On our way out of the city our other daughter texted us from her iPod Touch, using Textfree Unlimited, to tell us that power had been restored. 

On our way home we had to take the first exit out of the Lincoln Tunnel to get gas. We found a gas station right away but the attendant gave us bad directions to get back the NJ Turpike. We got lost. I used the iPhone's map application to find directions home. It worked beautifully. I was very thankful for the iPhone at that moment.

Throughout the day we checked our email, read the news while waiting, and I checked my Google Reader and Twitter feeds. Is the iPhone needed for a trip to NYC, no, but it sure made the trip easier, allowed us to share the experience with others, and got us out of a jam.