Tag: guide

Categories
Tips

Listen up! iPod and audio travel guides and tours

An iPod toddler (courtesy GoonSquadSarah at Flickr CC)Are your kids like mine – often with some sort of headphone or earbud plugged into their aural sockets?  Take advantage of that tendency by looking for available iPod/audio guides and tours when you travel.  Kids can keep looking plugged-in and “cool” but may actually learn something on your trip.

As a parent, of course, your job is to never seem too “Squeeee!” happy when they occasionally admit that something is informative or educational.

Where do you find these tours?

First, if you use iPods, do a search in the iTunes store; Apple recognizes the value of their audio tour podcasts although the iTunes Search function is not particularly good.

There are many well-established general travel podcasts (think of them as little radio shows) from Indie Travel Podcast (latest topics as of this writing include Christchurch, New Zealand and Tasmania) the Amateur Traveler (latest episodes are about the Republic of Georgia, London and Easter Island) Frommers.com and Rick Steves who covers Europe.  An iTunes search for Disney informational podcasts returns a bunch of options too; just make sure they’re fairly recent since things can change quickly at the parks.

You can also find location-specific offerings on iTunes like LAWithKids for Los Angeles and audio/video podcast offerings from VisitLondon.com.

Some companies focus specifically on audio offerings – AudioSnacks, for example, has a big section for audio tours, and the company SoundWalk has some very unique walking tours that place special emphasis on New York City, although they do have a few other cities as well. The media company ARTineraries has professionally-produced tours of mostly Italian historic sites.  LearnOutLoud has a kid’s audio section, too.

The UK’s Guardian, always a good source of worldwide travel information, has a small selection of free audio tours called Sounds of the City (Athens, Rome, Nice, Marseille, Valencia and Granada) plus an eclectic collection of very personalized audio travel guides, featuring people like musician Franz Ferdinand taking you on a tour of his hometown of Glasgow.

Some travel guide companies also produce audio – I like the DK (Dorling-Kindersley) Eyewitness guides for their clean layout and liberal use of photos and graphics, so I was pleased to find that they also have a few DK Travel podcasts.

Finding these things is a classic Google search problem, but I’ve had best results when I query search engines about tours for a specific location.  As I always advise, start with the tourism board/Convention and Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) for the place you’re going to visit.  For example, the Chicago Office of Tourism has free downloadable guides including Chicago for Kids and a blues tour narrated by Buddy Guy.  Even smaller towns may have them; Astoria and Warrenton, Oregon have audio tours guided by locals and sponsored by the local Chamber of Commerce.

Don’t forget that most museums have had audio tours for a long time, including big places like Chicago’s Field Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art, plus smaller ones like the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, which has tours in English and Spanish.

Let us know in the comments if you have any favorites!

Categories
Asia

My top tips for travel with kids to Tokyo, Japan

Ema wooden prayer cards at Meiji Shrine, Harajuku, Tokyo (photo by Sheila Scarborough)Through a couple of referrals by mutual friends on Twitter (here’s my Twitter stream) I got a question from Mzinga executive and social media business strategist Jim Storer about taking his family to Japan later this year.

After pulling together an email for Jim, with links to most of my Japan-related writings across this blog, the Perceptive Travel Blog and some other publications, I thought, why not put the same consolidated information in a helpful blog post?

I lived in Japan for awhile while serving with the Navy near Fukuoka, on Kyushu, and returned a couple of years back when my daughter was a preteen, staying for about a month and a half near Tokyo.

Japan is not an “easy” destination for families  —  that’s not to scare you off,  but so you’ll know that standing around feeling like a complete idiot (and usually a lost idiot who can’t determine north from south) is TOTALLY normal for a visitor to Japan. It’s worth it, though.

I always advocate pushing out of the coddled tourist bubble and striking out on your own, but it’s harder to do that with kids in tow. Mix it up – do the “weird stuff” (occasionally feeling like an idiot) and then allow occasional forays into McDonald’s or Starbucks for some feeling of familiarity. Your brain will need it more frequently than you’d think, especially with kids.

I don’t care what anyone tells you, English is not widely spoken, but it really doesn’t matter all that much. Do a lot of bowing and hand gestures; the Japanese will generally go out of their way to help.

Let me tell you, travel around Europe after that was (comparatively) a piece of cake.

My writings on Japan:

***  Here’s an article I wrote about taking a preteen to Tokyo, for the San Antonio Express-News:  Navigating Tokyo with a ‘tween.

***  One of my first posts – an itinerary for Asakusa to Odaiba in Tokyo. It can fill one whole day.

***  They’re everywhere and they’re awesome – one of the main things I miss about Japan – vending machines!

***  You need to know how to use a squat toilet.

***  If you plan to rent a car in Japan, stand by to blow up your brain by driving on the left.

***  Here’s my guest post on Away.com’s family travel blog about climbing Mt. Fuji:  Trip of a lifetime – climbing Fuji with a preteen.

***  Great side trip from Tokyo: Yokohama (try to see the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum.)

***  Another good Tokyo side trip: the beaches at Zushi and Kamakura (see the giant Buddha, or Daibutsu, at Kamakura – here’s a Taylor family post about it, and an excellent description of the area by travelers Susan and Lars.)

***  Fun souvenir: Japanese children’s chopsticks and bento boxes.

***  More great souvenirs: Kappabashi Dori where you can buy plastic food.

***  Don’t miss the summer fireworks and local matsuri (festivals.) Check the Tokyo tourist Web site event calendar for matsuri dates and locations, but you may also stumble across one going on in the streets so be ready to get swept up in the fun! One of my favorite blogs about Japan, AMPONTAN, has a whole category about Japanese festivals; most posts are titled Matsuri-da!

Guidebooks – I wore out my copy of TimeOut Tokyo and I’m a long-time fan of Frommer’s guides for good overviews. Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Guides are pretty good but are rather heavy. I’d get one good guidebook for Japan overall and then a small one for the city where you’ll spend the most time.

Maps. You’ll want maps. The guidebooks have ’em and they always boot up and don’t need WiFi.

When you arrive, look for copies of Metropolis and TimeOut Tokyo magazines, for the latest info in English (Metropolis Visitor’s Guide online, and TimeOut Tokyo online.)

For good blogs and news sites about Japan, take a look at Alltop, an “online magazine rack,” and their topic page on Japan.

Another good book is CultureShock! Japan: A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette.

Here’s the BootsnAll Travel Network portal page for Japan.

Did I miss anything about taking kids to Japan, especially Tokyo? Tell us about it in the comments….

Categories
Book Reviews Tips

Win my copy of Shelly Rivoli’s Travels with Baby

Book cover, Travels with Baby (courtesy Shelly Rivoli)Even though it has been a few years since my kids were babies and toddlers, I have no problem remembering what a challenge it was to take them on family road trips, or to travel on airplanes while lugging a diaper bag, car seat, Cheerios dispenser and those squirty juice boxes.

If my Mom memory fails me, I can get right back up to speed with Shelly Rivoli’s excellent book, Travels with Baby: The Ultimate Guide for Planning Trips with Babies, Toddlers, and Preschool-Age Children.

The San Francisco Bay Area-based Ms. Rivoli is an experienced traveler and mother of three (welcome to her new baby Theo, born this month!) She’s active on Twitter and also blogs about her latest thoughts and advice on travel with young ones.

Here are some highlights from Shelly’s book:

*** Detailed pre-trip planning tips, including “Fifteen Things You Might Not Think to Pack” (yes, an inflatable beach ball is a total what-to-play-with lifesaver!)

*** Honest feedback about the relative ease of traveling with infants, who mostly just want to be carried and nursed, and have a clean diaper on their bottom. With a good carrier, you are free to walk around and do adult-ish things like shopping while baby snoozes, or those curious little eyes peek out from the sling to take in the sights. In a few short months, they will be running all around getting into things, and the infant days will seem like a piece of cake.

*** Lots of helpful guidance about international travel, including food and water safety, vaccinations and “bringing the ugly Winnie the Pooh diaper bag” so that its contents are obvious and it’s less likely to be swiped. On Shelly’s blog, one of her latest entries is about flying to India with a 2-year-old. I like her sense of adventure.

*** She has a whole chapter on taking a cruise with young children; which seems like a no-brainer good idea but can have a number of unexpected pitfalls, as Condé Nast Traveler‘s Wendy Perrin will tell you.  I also like Shelly’s extensive section on train travel (such as it is in the US.)

Shelly Rivoli at Chichen ItzaIf all this sounds like your kind of book, here’s what to do to win my copy:

***  Leave a brief comment below about why you’d like to read “Travels with Baby”.

***  At the end of this week, on Friday, March 27, 2009, I will randomly pick one of your comments using one of the cool tools on Random.org, then I’ll announce the winner in a separate post.

***  If you win, I’ll email you at the address you leave when you comment (to get your snail mail address,) then I’ll box up the book and send it to you. Yes, I’ll mail to places outside the US.

Thanks for participating, and thanks very much to Shelly for sending me a review copy.

Good luck!