When living life on the road you run into all sorts of hassles and restrictions just trying to find a place to stay. One of these major constraints is that in 2020 it has become hard to find a spot that will actually let you be there for a night or two without hassle.
You see most parking spots these days ask for money. Be it most parking spots in a city, or even private camping grounds - you will be hard-pressed to find a spot where you are just allowed to be without paying for the privilege to stay a few hours let alone the entire night, even if you don't use sanitation services or any other service offered.
Unless you know the area well or are willing to try your luck in places where locals might get worried if they see a van with a foreign license plate park outside their little town it feels like it has gotten harder to just exist in a van without heaps of parking fees piling up.
Fortunately, there is this app we have tried the last few days and boy oh boy, has it helped us find some awesome parking spots! So naturally I can't help myself but do some promotion here in case you ever find yourself out with your car, van or motor home and need a free spot for a good night's rest.
Intuitive control, amazing array of parking options, community-driven
Park4Night is just one of these things that work. It's an app for mobile phones that anyone can use intuitively without learning the interface or studying weird programming decisions - everything is right there at your finger tips.
The center-piece is a giant map with countless parking spots on it, allowing you to focus on one of them at a time and finding out more about it. These entries often include a short summary by the user who has added them, pictures, ratings, additional information like running water & electricity availability, as well as what sort of parking space it is - public, private, corporate.
Entries always include suitability for staying the night as well - some spots may look great on paper but when you get there you find out that they are next to a major highway, that airplanes fly low overhead or that there is a hunting and rifle club nearby where shots are fired deep into the night.
Many spots are meant for hikers out to enjoy nature and do not charge for the privilege of staying there even after hours - we found beautiful locations that way and even stayed two days in a row in the same spot without a problem.
You can add parking locations if you find one that is not yet in the database and you can do your best to easily add information after your stay in order to give the community more detailed information on the spot you chose.
Best of all, the app is completely free to use with your mobile, features only non-annoying minimal adds displayed on the main page and has a pro-version with all sorts of gimmicks like offline browsing of the database in case you are in remote areas, as well as other features like searching ideal spots along a specific route or filtering the database by all sorts of parameters you can think of. There are also options to bookmark your favorite parking spots and have the app keep track of the ones you took during your last journey, enabling you to recommend spots to your friends on the road.
The pro version currently goes for roundabout 2 € per month or lets you choose an annual subscription for 10 €. Considering that a single day of parking inside Stuttgart already cost us 8,60 € and that the free version is more than enough to get around and find great spots to stay the night I'd say this app has definitely improved the traveler's life a lot!
It's just awesome to see that things like this exist and are continuously being tweaked by the programmers and the community, in times when the matrix and fee structure is becoming ever more audacious in pulling money out of people's pockets for no service and no special offer other than a spot to park your car while on travel.
The community factor is something really awesome as well! Genuine people writing about these locations from their own individual point of view make this app a goldmine of awesome places to discover and I feel compelled to add my two cents to all the spots we visited in order to further improve the database.
I just checked if there is a desktop version of Park4Night, which would make writing the reviews and comments much more enjoyable to me aaaaand: there is. Awesome! It will streamline my review entries and picture upload so much more than with a smart phone.
There is also something to be said about a new kind of promotion these apps open up.
As I wrote yesterday, we had found this awesome parking spot for the night next to an authentic Southern-German-cuisine restaurant where we had an amazing dinner and the owners were just so friendly to us! As it is not really on the highway but the owner couple really appreciated our being there and wished us all the best we feel we want to greatly improve upon the park4night entry for said parking spot because it would drive so many more van-welling people with good intentions to them, allowing them to keep their business open and enjoy the amazing company of travelers from all over Europe and beyond looking for a place to spend the night and eat some real awesome genuine food from a local chef.
So, if you'll allow me, I have a parking spot review to write ;) Actually three of them, as we have already used this app thrice and had an awesome time at each location paying zero money and getting a good night's rest nontheless.
Thanks Park4Night! I hope you will continue on your awesome mission and never sell out to the gang like so many other awesome, innovative and promising projects of your caliber have! I'd rather we drive even more users to you so that there is no need to do weird deals but to keep the framework of the app and the free version exactly as it is, only with tons more awesome information and an ever-increasing database of breathtaking places where van dwellers can meet and connect on their travels, as well as inspire people they meet along the way who are dreaming about doing the same thing one day...
gocamper.ro
htpratique.com
junedarville.com
fotonomaden.com
