Travel and Leisure
Ok, so this is how much of a travel geek I am. Let me back up a little bit. My number one travel tip that I give to people who are going or returning to Europe, is to take advantage of the free walking tours with Rick Steves Audio Europe App. If you read the article, you'll understand why this is the way to go to get insight and historical information about the sites and attractions you are visiting. Sure, you could get a local guide, but then you are on a schedule, and who wants that while you're on vacation?
 |
| RC Walking Tours recording studio |
 |
| Self-guided tours require reading |
So for our upcoming trip to France, I picked up a couple of his guidebooks. I noticed that he has written self-guided tours for places not covered on his Audio Europe app, but instead you have to read them while you are at those locations. We've actually done this recently for our last European trip; for each new place we went to in Croatia, we looked up free self-guided tours and would cut & paste the text onto our phones. With this info literally in hand, we'd walk around town, and one of us would read it aloud, so we knew what we were looking at. I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, so reading and walking are definitely out of the question. And while this was better than no context at all, I prefer to have someone telling me the background or history while I walk and explore (not to mention the issue with my far-sighted vision).
This got me to thinking, what if I just dictated what Rick has written and recorded it to a file to play on my iPhone? And that's what I decided to do today... well for one walking tour. It took me a bit to figure out the best way to record and edit the file, but now that I've done one, it is going to make the rest easier. It's still a bit of work, as I'm not a natural orator, and my pronunciation of some of the names and places is definitely a little off. I also found that the best way to play these on an iPhone is to bind and upload the recordings as an M4B file and then load as an audiobook using the Books app.
That way, when you are using playback, you have access to controls to skip forward or more likely, backwards, by 15 seconds. I used the
AudioBookBinder app (Mac), so there are “chapters” that are available via that control, which allows you to jump to a specific spot on the tour, just like the Rick Steves app. Also, using the Books app, it will remember where you are, so that if you decide to take a break for a coffee, or spot a shop that you want to go into, you don't need to fast forward back to pick up your place in the recording again. Where the map in the Rick Steves book has numbered points of interest, I've used the same numbering plan.
It definitely makes things easier and informative when we are touring our destination, and it gives me something to do during our cold, wet winters.
