The Great and Wonderful Mobile Conference in Barcelona was in some ways a make believe world of gadgets and devices that will do everything except make the coffee. Movies, TV, emails (of course), travel info, friends all while you are on the go, disconnected as were from your home base.

But lets see how it works in real life – does it match expectations?

Let’s say you are traveling to Amsterdam – lucky you have an iPhone as you can read the Lonely Planet guide to Amsterdam right on your phone, including recommendations for an accommodation Amsterdam (in case you hadn’t already booked).

Did you know there are over 50 museums in Amsterdam? Worried that the free navigators don’t have all of them mapped (though I’m guessing they do!) try the citynavigtor.    Choose any site and the device will guide you from where you are directly to where you want to be.

But that’s just a start.  You get to Amsterdam and have your pick of free navigation to choose from including Ovi maps (thank you Navteq), Cloudmade maps (check them out – cool company) and yes, the ubiquitous Google.  Just start driving, search for the closest petrol station and voila, you will be guided there for free.  Navteq’s introduce free walking maps, so that not only can you get to your favorite restaurant, it will find you the shortcuts through the lovely parks and across the canals.

Introduce augmented reality into the mix and you’ve got an overlay on the map of the closest canal dock with arrows, or rent pedal boats and get an overlay of the canal route to take.

Then there are the cool apps that help you around the city. One of my favorites is Foursquare.  You can check in with your friends in the city (you’d be surprised who might be there), get tips on where to go (and where not to go) and even get ideas for good accommodations. Yelp also helps you find hotspots like great restaurants and bars.

There’s Twitee where you can post your travel pictures to your twitter account, countless weather apps that will tell you the weather (in case you can’t tell by standing outside) and really useful ones like Tripit that will let you know if a flight is cancelled (well not very useful when there is volcanic ash all over Europe and ALL the flights are cancelled).    Iamhere will send a link to your friends that will open a Google map, accurate to 100 feet. Now that is a new age of travel!