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If you’re a traveler looking for a non-tourist’s view of your city of choice, the walking tours in the Detour app are perfect. The audio tours are available for tons of cities and are narrated by REAL locals who actually know the area and all the non-touristy places you’d never know about otherwise.
For instance, my home city of Chicago has an architectural tour by Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Jen Masengarb, a Grant Park tour with radio host Richard Steele, a South Side Bronzeville tour with jazz performer Maggie Brown, and an Old Town tour with Chicago Tribune reporter Rick Kogan. All locals, all totally knowledgeable about Chicago from a native’s perspective.
They have over 180 tours for loads of cities including NYC, San Francisco, DC, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, Boston, LA, Portland, OR, London, Paris, Marrakech, Berlin, Rome, Tokyo, Seoul, and more. You can even tour the Brooklyn Bridge with Ken Burns(!). It’s not just where to go, either. Tours are chock full of neat little details, history, and trivia that you’d never know otherwise.
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The bigger reason I wanted to call out the Detour app is that the walking tours are currently totally free until the end of May due to a recent acquisition by Bose. Apparently they’re planning to use the service for some kind of augmented reality app. Pretty cool. Even when they presumably go back to being paid tours, they’re not too expensive, around $5. It’s pretty worth it for a hand-held tour by a local with insider details.
You can snag the Detour app in your app store or find it here.
Do you use audio tour apps? Which ones are your favorites?
About the Author: Catherine Clark
Catherine Clark loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur babies, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com.
Oh, interesting! Time to download the DC one!
I just loved this and shared it with all my tour loving friends! I love walking tours! Thanks for that!