I finally broke down and bought our tickets to Italy this week so it's time to start planning in earnest. And just in time for our trip, I see that Rick Steves has put up a series of iPod tours for Italy. Excellent.

I have recenty started reading his Italy book, and we've been working our way through his Italy shows. I've got a vague outline for our itinerary and should be firming it up in the months to come. I do know that our trip will start in Milan and end in Rome, it's the middle bit that is still fuzzy.

Labels: audio_tour, iPod, italy, travel planning

I don't know why I love audio tours so much, but I do. I've written about them extensively in the past and will continue to hunt them down for whatever upcoming trips we might have.

Today, while browsing around on Audible I came across various audio tours of sites on the Yucatan Peninsula put together by a company called TekTrek. I'm glad I found them through Audible first and not just by stumbling across their web site, because if that had been the case I never would have been able to figure out where to get them as there is nothing on their site even indicating that they are for sale. Now I don't want to tell them how to run their business, but it's an oversight they may want to correct.

Anyway, when I start to research our Mexico trip, I will have a better idea which tours are for us, but I'm sure we'll try out a couple of them if they fit into our itinerary.

Labels: audio_tour, iPod, mexico, travel planning, yucatan

I'm very excited to see that Soundwalk has some new Paris walking tours. Five of them, to be exact. I am a big fan of both this concept in general and this company in particular (as you can see from my review of two of the New York tours).

I all ready plan on getting at least two of them (the Marais and the St Germain tours), and may break down and get them all. I know we won't have time to do all of them, but they will be fun to listen to anyway.

Labels: audio_tour, france, iPod, paris

National Geographic Traveler offers a number of interesting podcasts, one of which is a series of walking tours narrated by Rudy Maxa of PBS' Smart Travels.

Destinations covered include a wide range of cities including Paris, Amsterdam, New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

I haven't listened to them yet, but I'll check out one soon and write a little review.

To subscribe to this podcast in iTunes click here.

Labels: amsterdam, audio_tour, california, dc, europe, france, iPod, new_york, paris, san_francisco, united_states

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.

Labels: audio_tour, iPod, new_york, paris, united_states

This site offers a couple of walking tours of Amsterdam.

I'm particularly excited about the Rembrandt tour.

Labels: amsterdam, audio_tour, europe, iPod

Rick Steves' is finally producing Audio versions of the walking tours in his books. And lucky us, he's starting with Paris!

The first two up are audio guides for the Louvre and d'Orsay museums along with maps.

They can be downloaded from his site here or you can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes.

Next up is are tours of Versailles and an historic Paris walk.

This is great. I love to do the walking tours in his books when traveling, and it will be so much nicer not to have to carry around the books and stop to read every few minutes. This way is much more inconspicuous.

Labels: audio_tour, europe, france, iPod, paris