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Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Tours Make a Vacation Better, Episode 274

Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Annie Sargent

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, History

4.81.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2020

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In today's episode of the podcast, Annie and Elyse wonder how tours make a vacation better. Won't you have a great time in Paris or anywhere in France even if you don't take a tour? To some extent, yes.

But we know from experience that tours make it possible for you to make the most of every minute by taking you straight to the best stuff.

Tours greatly enhance the visit because we all like to know what were're looking at, don't we? There is no doubt that if you don't take a tour, you'll miss out. We give several examples of how that's happened to us in the episode!

Tours Make a Vacation Better If You Are a Curious Person

We know one thing for sure: Our listeners are curious about France! The best time to feed that curiosity is while you visit France and walking around the place you've heard about. Would you like to hear about the cool things that happened in a particular neighborhood? Of course you do! Would it make a difference to learn that historically significant people lived where you are? We know it does!

But you'll miss out on a lot of wonderful experiences if you walk around with no help. We want you to feed your curiosity about France. Do you need to learn about the cool things that happened in a particular neighborhood? Of course you do!

Some people, Annie used to be one of them, aren't in the habit of taking tours. They wonder will I get bored? Will it be a waste of time? Wouldn't I rather have the freedom to do what I want? Well, VoiceMap tours are designed not to be boring, they get to the point, they let you do what you want because you can pause and resume at will, and they are inexpensive!

How to Purchase Annie and Elyse's Tours

You can get Annie's Tours and Elyse's Tour directly from the VoiceMapApp or download the App and then unlock the tour by purchasing a code. Elyse also does in-person tours in and around Toulouse. Use the contact form on her website to inquire or email her: elysart@live.fr

Download your Paris tours now!
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Did you get my VoiceMap Paris tours yet? They are designed for people who want to see the best of Paris neighborhoods and put what they are looking at into historical context. There are so many great stories in Paris. Don't walk right past them without having a clue what happened there! You can buy them directly from the VoiceMap app or click here to order activation codes at the podcast listener discount price.

Discussed in this Episode

  • [04:35] Rediscovering the London Theater District in London with Ian McEwen's tour on VoiceMap
  • [06:05] What if you don't normally take tours?
  • [06:52] Tours make the experience better
  • [07:33] Taking tours where you've lived for a long time is surprisingly interesting!
  • [08:00] Taking audio tours in Museums is interesting even for an art historian like Elyse!
  • [08:44] You will miss a lot of stuff if you don't take any sort of tour
  • [09:03] Paris is a big city with lots of distractions
  • [10:03] VoiceMap tours give you maximal freedom
  • [10:13} You can run VoiceMap tours without data because everything is downloaded to your phone!
  • [11:08] Tours are great for curious people
  • [12:02] Don't forget to look up!
  • [12:34] Missing the Procope even though it has signs!
  • [13:19} More on the complete flexibility of VoiceMap tours
  • [15:16] A visit to the Royal Albert Hall with a "serious" guide
  • [15:30] Some tour guides are actors and crack more jokes than anything
  • [16:45] We understand why some people don't take tours: some live guides sound like robots!
  • [17:30] Good in-person guides can adjust the tour to their audience
  • [18:13] Are VoiceMap tours too cheap?
  • [20:20] How to buy Annie and Elyse's VoiceMap tours and how they work
  • [21:45] Elyse is working on a tour about the occupation and resistance in Toulouse
  • [22:00] Annie has Paris tours about Île de la Cité Marais Montmartre and Saint-Germain-des-Prés
  • [22:50] Talking to the people who are reluctant about taking tours
  • [24:22] Audio tours enhance the experience
  • [25:06] Don't be purely and Instagram tourist!
  • [26:17] You can actually take Annie and Elyse in your pocket!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is Join Us in France, episode 274.

0:04.0

Bonjou, I'm Annie Sergeant, and on a typical episode of join us in France,

0:09.0

I talk with someone who's visited France and tells us all about it.

0:13.4

But today I chat with my friend Elise,

0:15.8

who is a licensed tour guide in France

0:18.2

and has just published her first voice map,

0:21.3

self-guided walking tour of Toulouse, I talked her into trying it.

0:26.2

And it seems she's going to continue producing tours for the southwest of France, so that is great

0:31.7

news because there wasn't much in terms of self-guided

0:35.7

walking tours in this area which is a problem because they're wonderful.

0:41.3

We also chat about the coronavirus scare aka COVID-19. We recorded our

0:49.1

conversation a full week before you hear it so things have changed but as I record this

0:54.2

introduction on Thursday March 5th to 2020 we now have 377 confirmed cases in France, six dead.

1:06.0

Very few people are wearing masks,

1:09.0

but French people are stocking up on hand cleaning jail and not on toilet paper.

1:16.2

It's funny how each country reacts differently.

1:19.4

Everybody keeps asking on the Facebook group, should I cancel my trip and we can't answer that for you

1:26.0

I'm afraid we're not medical professionals and we can't tell the future either so

1:31.8

that puts us in a pickle to answer questions like that.

1:36.0

But France hasn't been hit as hard as Italy so far. That could change. We don't know. It's about this at the same level as

1:46.2

Germany and of course in France we have a very good public health system and they

1:51.6

are counting the number of cases testing a lot of people.

...

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