• Audio Tours of London
• Audio Tours of Rome, Venice, Florence and Pompeii
• Audio Tours of New York
• Audio Tours of Paris
• Audio Tours of Varanasi, India
• Translate On Your iPod

Let Your MP3 Player Be Your Guide

Traveling abroad might be a good way to get away from it all, but sometimes being in a new city isn’t as peaceful as one would hope.

A quiet art museum isn’t so serene if you end up having to battle tourists in order to read the information next to each painting; a leisurely stroll through a public park is all well and good, until you get sucked into a large tour where you spend most of the time searching for the guide’s big purple umbrella. You can always drown out everyone and everything by plugging in your MP3 player, but your downloads might just distract you from being in the moment. That is, unless you’ve downloaded something specifically designed to complement your journey….

Savvy travelers are now going online to find a variety of guided tours designed to help give the inside scoop on destinations around the world. The downloadable guides are also a good way to differentiate yourself from the average, conspicuous tourist. (Remember that guy you saw on that walking tour who had his head so buried in the tour book he forgot to take in the actual sites? You don’t want to be that guy). With ear buds firmly placed, visitors to London can explore the Covent Garden, Greenwich, and Westminster areas by downloading cheerily narrated tours from Blue Brolly.com. Want to learn about an ancient city and also find out where to get a good cappuccino? The tours at iJourneys.com offer information on Italian cities that’s sure to be both helpful and handy.

Others prefer the intimate tours offered at Soundwalk.com, where idiosyncratic locals—a graffiti artist, a gallery owner, an usher, and others – guide the downloader into the most hidden nooks of neighborhoods in France and India, as well as New York.

Now, if only your little gadget could translate for you too. What’s that? It can? Mon Dieu! What will they think of next.

 

Posted on January 09, 2006