Archive for August, 2006
Aug 23rd, 2006
Soundwalk
I can’t remember where I first heard about the Soundwalk audio walking tours (although I suspect it was probably Gridskipper), but I was immediately interested. I loved the idea of a walking tour that I could load onto my iPod and do at my leisure.
So last year when I was in New York to see Spamalot I bought three of their tours to take with me (the Brooklyn Dumbo, Lower East Side, and Meat Packing District walking tours). In the course of my visit I managed to do all three, and thoroughly enjoyed them. I even got to meet the narrator of the Meat Packing tour (at one point she instructs you to ring her bell, and you can go up to her gallery and talk to her). Of the three I liked the Lower East Side tour the least, all though that one was still pretty good and the Dumbo tour the most.
So how do they work? Every tour comes with an audio file and a pdf of the tour route, but really you only need the pdf to find your starting point, and I suppose, if you get hopelessly lost along the way, to reorient yourself. But the directions are usually pretty clear and I mostly always found myself ahead of the narrator, and had to wait on the corner (like they suggest) until they could catch up. One problem I ran into, was with both the Meat Packing tour and the Dumbo tour, the areas are changing so quickly, that some of the mentioned locations were gone, or inaccessible. Although this only happened a few times and didn’t ruin my enjoyment.
For our upcoming trip, I purchased the Wall Street and Little Italy tours. I don’t know if we’ll have time to do both, but I’m sure we can squeeze at least one in.
The company also offers a walking tours of Paris (which we will definitely be using on our trip next year), India and other locals in and around New York.
Overall I think this is a brilliant concept whose time has come. I’ve found a few other companies offering similar things and those links can be found on the resource pages.
Posted in Travel Tools | No Comments
Aug 23rd, 2006
Updated
I’ve added resource pages for Washington, DC and Paris.
Also, I’ve added links to a couple of podcast walking tours of DC offered by Slate.com. Here’s the iTunes link.
Update: Added a New York resource page as well.
Posted in Maintenance | No Comments
Aug 19th, 2006
aTravelogue.com 2.0
Hey everybody and welcome to the all new aTravelogue.com.
I’m very excited about this new design as I think it will really allow me to expand this site to encompass all my upcoming travels and travel plans. I will be able to archive links, blog about my trips both before, during and after, and consolidate all my photo albums in one easy to find place.
I hope as this site expands it will become a resource for anyone looking to travel to the places I’ve researched.
There are still a few pages I need to get online, and as I finish them, I’ll put them up and announce it here.
Please look around and let me know what you think of the new site. All feedback is welcome.
Posted in Maintenance | No Comments
Aug 1st, 2006
Light posting and a redesign
I’m sorry posting has been so light around here lately, but I am in the midst of a redesign that will, hopefully, make things a little more organized.
Mainly this is because I’m widening the scope of this thing a bit to include information and links for a wide variety of place, my photography from my travels (both upcoming and in the past), and whatever else I think is appropriate.
I haven’t quite got this all sorted out yet, but I do have the beginnings of a design I’m pretty happy with and that should allow for future expansion.
Please stand by.
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