Scandinavian cruise port walking tours

Travel and Leisure

Siri: “Welcome to Visby, medieval gem of Gotland, a UNESCO-listed Hanseatic town…”

For our 12-night Princess cruise around the Baltic Sea, we’re going to stop at a number of interesting ports with rich cultures and history. Normally when we visit new European cities, the first thing we do, is look to see if Rick Steves has a free walking tour available on his Audio Europe app for smartphones. Unfortunately, for all the ports we’re going to visit, he hasn’t recorded any of them. But don’t despair, as he has written walking tours for most of the places, and through the magic of technology, I’ve used Siri to speak these tours for us, and that’s how I have created these audio files.

Rick doesn't have tours for Visby and Klaipėda, so I used ChatGPT to create them

There’s two ways to get these onto your iPhone (sorry Samsung users, I can’t offer any instructions for you) and depending on whether you sync with a Mac or not determines which way you’ll need to use.

Method 1: (easiest) use your Mac to transfer to your iPhone

Note: I’m sure there is a similar way to do this on Windows, but I don’t have one, so you’ll need to research how to do that on your own. 

1. Download the zip file to your Mac using this link.
2. Unzip the file by double-clicking it.
3. You will have two folders, one with the audiobook walk files and the other with walking maps.
4. Open the Books app on your Mac and import the audiobook files.
5. Sync your iPhone to your Mac, and select either all audiobooks or just the ones you’ve selected.
6. Airdrop or transfer the map images to your or your travel partner’s iPhone.

You’re done. Tip: Use one set of bluetooth earbuds shared between travel partners. Enjoy your time walking around the old town areas with Rick’s notes.

Method 2: (more labourious) download each walk individually directly to your iPhone

Note: this should work for Samsung users, but I have no way of validating the procedure below.

1. 
   Download the BookPlayer app from either the App Store or Google Play, depending on your device; it's free..
2. Assuming you are reading this on your iPhone's browser, click the link below for the tour you want (probably best to do this from home over your home Wi-Fi). If you are using Chrome and have the Google Drive app on your phone, you’ll need to tap and hold the link, then “Open in new tab”, which doesn’t require you to login to Drive.
3. 
   This should open a new browser tab that will will allow you to play the walk audio file directly from the Google cloud; you don't want to do that now, and you certainly don't want to do that when you're roaming in Europe.
4. Instead, tap the download option in the top bar.
5. This will open another tab where you are given an option to "Save..." at the bottom; save the file to your Files on your iPhone.
   Note: it is at this point where you could download all of the walks you want to take using steps 2-5.
6. Now launch the BookPlayer app; if you see an option to donate, you can just tap "Not Now".
7. 
   From the main screen, you should be able to "Add files", or by tapping the three dots in the top right, "Import files".
8. This should present you with a view to the documents in your Files app; tap "Browse" and find the file you saved (mine gets put in the Chrome folder).
9. Tap the centre of the file so that a checkmark highlights it, then tap "Open".
   If you had downloaded all the audio files, it is at this point you can/could mark them all and "bulk import" them.
10. 
    Now you're back to the BookPlayer import screen; tap the checkmark in the top right corner. Tap either Import into "Library" or to a "New Folder", where you'll be given an opportunity to create a folder for them, e.g. "Cruise Walks". 
11. You're ready to play the tour from BookPlayer, but wait, your partner needs the maps. So click the link to the image beside the walk file below, and save/transfer to your partner's device. 

Port	Audio tour	Walk map
Copenhagen:	City walk	Copenhagen
Visby:	Old Town walk (ChatGPT)	Visby
Stockholm:	Gamla Stan walk	Stockholm
Helsinki:	Welcome to Helsinki walk	Helsinki
Tallinnn:	Welcome to Tallinn walk	Tallinn
Riga:	Old Town & Art Nouveau	Riga
Klaipėda:	Old Town walk (ChatGPT)	Klaipėda
Gdańsk:	Gdańsk walk	Gdańsk
Oslo:	Oslo walk	Oslo
Skagen:	- sorry NA -	- NA -

 If the second method is too hard to figure out, contact your grandson, nephew, or nearest IT-support family member, but not me. Oh and BTW, once you have these on your iPhone, you can share these with others using Airdrop; just make sure the recipient has downloaded the BookPlayer app too.

I’ve made these for our cruise group of 10 passengers, and decided to share these so that others might benefit from the hours I’ve put into putting them together. If it works for you and your travel partner, great; if not, that’s too bad.