One of the hardest things about moving to a new city is not knowing where to go. I mean that in the most literal sense. After I moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, I couldn’t find anything. (Where are my frequently visited national retailers?) The only way I knew which way is West is because I finally located the ocean!

Not knowing how to get to a destination — well that’s a problem. But what if you don’t know where to go to begin with? New cities are full of undiscovered treasures, and I was itching to get out of my apartment and explore L.A., but I didn’t have a clue where to start.

Being the tech-savvy gal I am, I turned to Groupon for guidance. If you don’t already know about it, you can learn more here. In a nutshell, it features daily deals on the best stuff to do, see, eat, drink, and buy in various cities. There is a new deal each day, that people can sign up for (but it only becomes active after it meets a minimum level of interest).

If it weren’t for Groupon, I wouldn’t have learned a valuable lesson about myself — I am not coordinated enough for pole dancing. Seriously.

The first Groupon deal I snagged was for two sexy cardio classes and two pole-dancing lessons. (Needless to say, my mother was proud. Not.) Long story short, it is definitely possible to make pole dancing look unsexy. But at least I got to try a new experience and made some new friends who accepted my clumsiness. Since then, I’ve been collecting deals as if they were Pokémon (gotta catch ‘em all!). I’ve dug up a few restaurants for when family and friends visit, but most of the time I look for new activities. I need fun weekends after spending all week in front of a computer.

Clearly, I have become a fan of this service and iPhone app. So imagine my excitement when I learned about The Dealmap app. It aggregates local deals from sites like Groupon, Restaurants.com and other daily coupon services. On any given day, the service has around 350,000 active deals!

As a website, Dealmap allowed you to sign up for notifications with your e-mail address or immediately search for local deals with your zip code. It would then pull up a Google map, and deals were flagged according to their categories (restaurants, shopping, kid-friendly, etc). And the app version has even more perks than the website! It automatically displays offers within a one-mile radius of your current location (thanks to GPS). With a sleek interface, it’s easy to filter the deals based on category — this is helpful when you know what you’re looking for, unlike me who just loves to have options!

One thing that Dealmap is doing right is incorporating a leaderboard: The more deals you add, the more points you rack up. You can also view the top scorers and track your points. These can eventually add up to badges and free gift certificates.

The only big downside so far is the quality of the deals. There are some really good ones, but sometimes, there’s more to it than meets the eye. (Occasionally, you need to check with the deal provider for further restrictions.) So a deal could say “$25 gift certificate for $2,” but there may be some fine print. Another frustration was looking for deals this evening, and finding many of listings had expired.

Update: I just received a tweet from The Dealmap. The expired deals showing up is a bug and will be fixed in the next update. Quick customer support rocks!!

Even so, I’ve found a lot of great restaurant deals that will come in handy when my family visits next month. (Although I haven’t found any other deals that require coordination or grace.)

Do you have any favorite iPhone apps that helped you while visiting or adjusting to life in a new city? Chime in below!