I love audio tours. They are an easy way to learn more about a city - from the experts! We've got an excellent resource in audio tours to share with you today - CityListen. CityListen offers two Chicago Tours (Architectural Gems, Urban Sculpture); 8 NYC Tours (Brooklyn Heights, Central Park, Greenwich Village, Lower East Side, Lower Manhattan, NYC Rock and ROll, Upper East Side, and Walkin' Broadway); 3 Paris Tours (Isles of the Seine, The Left Bank, The Marais); and 2 San Francisco Tours (Haight Ashbury, North Beach).

One of the best things about audio tours is the ability to learn more about a place, while going at your own pace. This is particularly invaluable to our family, as we have a child (detours for food are important) and we can also accommodate my disabilities more easily by ourselves. We were lucky enough to sit down and chat with Jonathan Paisner of CityListen, about their tours. Here's what he had to say...

WE:  Please tell us about CityListen Audio Tours...

JP: We develop and publish audio walking tours for iPods and MP3 players. These are professionally developed tours that you listen to on your own iPod. You’ve got all the benefits of a guided tour, yet with the flexibility and simplicity of a self-guided experience. There is no better way to connect with a city than to see it on foot. And you make a deeper connection if you walk with a knowledgeable guide pointing out key landmarks and cultural or historical events. We basically put that guide at your fingertips.

WE:  How do the tours work?

JP: The tours play on any iPod/iPhone or MP3 player. You download a tour from our website, sync it to your device and you’re good to go. We tell you where to begin and then lead you step-by-step through the tour. From there it pretty much behaves like an audio tour at a musuem – but instead of walking around the inside of a museum, you’re touring Central Park in New York City or Haight Ashbury in San Francisco. You can also download a map for each of the tours to help guide your walk. What’s great is that you can stop anywhere along the way and restart the tour as you wish. People have told us about how they take our Isles of the Seine tour, for example – and stop along the way for lunch or to soak in the local scene at a café, really spending the better part of a day in the area and using the tour as a focal point of the experience. Or you can take a break from our Rock and Roll tour with a stop along the way at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex. Any of these tours, the whole thing is just right on your own device – so it’s easy to stop for lunch or shopping or go into a museum or a gallery. You have this great guide at your fingertips  – and you can just make it a part of however you want to travel and explore.

Painted Victorian houses on a hill in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco

WE:  What cities/areas do you have tours for?

JP: We currently have tours in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Paris. Our latest tour in New York City is a Broadway history tour –and this one is a bit different than the others as it’s almost more of a radio documentary than a traditional walking tour.  The tour features a number of interviews with Broadway notables (producers, stars, writers) and we hear their first-person accounts as we are standing beside the theaters where these things happened. Here we really take advantage of the audio medium to bring this Broadway experience that you simply can’t get anywhere else.

WE:  Who creates your tours? What is their background?

JP: We are very careful about who we work with to develop these tours. Our feeling is that you are spending probably a couple of hours on a vacation or a day-trip with us, and we have a responsibility to really help you appreciate what you are seeing, to be surprised, to be intrigued, to have a truly compelling experience. So, we will only work with guides that can deliver this type of feeling, this level of insight. These are superior tour guides, subject matter experts, historians, people who can walk with you down any street of the tour and make the city just come alive for you.

WE:   How can travelers best use your tours?

JP: Many folks come back to us and talk about the simplicity and the convenience of these tours. Chances are, for many of us, you're traveling with a device that supports our tours. As you load up the music or podcasts or audiobooks you’ll be bringing with you, adding one (or more) of our tours is just as easy. As you plan your trip, add a tour or two to your iPod. And whether you plan a day around a tour or just think you might find yourself with a bit of free time, you’ve got this great activity ready when you are. These tours are so easy and fun – and once you take one, you’ll really be hooked.

Gay Street - Greenwich Village

WE:   Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?

JP: Travel (or just exploring another part of a city if you’re a native) is never simply about seeing the sights. We’re always looking for ways to help our customers turn their sightseeing into an experience. We’ve seen people creating these informal travel groups where a bunch of friends will take a tour together and build this really interesting group experience out of it. Others have used Facebook or other social media to bring people together for the purpose of this shared journey through immigration history in NYC’s Lower East Side or whatever it might be. We’ve begun posting some customer photos on our site – and we’ve seen folks post pictures they’ve taken on their tours in Facebook and the like. It is very rewarding to see people take this great material that we’ve developed and build their own unique experience around it.

All of our tours are available for download at www.citylisten.com. Mac or PC compatible.

WE: Thanks so much, Jonathan! I am very excited to share this with our Wandering Educators - and look forward to exploring the Broadway History tour with them soon!

For more information, please see:
http://www.CityListen.com

Feature Photo: Duffy Square (NYC - Broadway Tour)

All photos courtesy and copyright of CityListen.com