A Walking Tour Of New Orleans

I read on NOLA.com, Podcast Offers an Insider's View of New Orleans.

This is pretty cool. According to the article, Audissey Guides offers walking tours of various cities that play on you MP3 player. Right now Audissey offers tours of Boston, Chicago, Miami Beach, Seattle, Hollywood, and now, New Orleans. The premise behind Audissey Guides is that they get a local to walk you through various local haunts to give you an insiders view of a city.

Each tour is recorded in one hour (but you can take as long as you want with it) and costs $10.00. The article on NOLA.com says that $1 of each sale, of the NO tour, goes to a charity to help New Orleans musicians get health insurance. I can't find that on the site but that's pretty cool.

The tour host is Brent Baudean, who, according to the advertisement is "100% Cajun Creole (not that I's doubting it). He's lived in southeast Louisiana all his life. And he's a self-professed "Quarter Rat" -- a name for the hipsters that live, work, and play in the French Quarter. Brent's a tour guide, a musician, a pool shark, and a drinker. In other words, he's a New Orleanian."

The tour takes you to Johnny White's, Faulkner House Book, the Marigny and more.

I like the descriptions of the people who work at Audissey:

Rob has sung karaoke in Nicaragua, been penniless in Sarajevo, arm-wrestled in Mexico, lost a drinking competition in Guatemala, eaten Count Chocula cereal in Transylvania, and most recently, sipped fresh lemonade with ex-guerrillas in the mountains of El Salvador.

His preferred method of travel is hitchhiking. Or sometimes the bus, but only if the bus is colorful, and has people riding on top.

Juliet has left a trail of broken hearts throughout Central Europe, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and now East Boston. She is into the marketing thing. She's got extensive -- nay, profound -- experience in marketing and strategic alliances, working with brands such as United Online Media, NASCAR, NBC, Sony Studios, EA Sports, ESPN and many more.

This is a pretty neat item for tourists and for natives looking to refind the city or maybe even find some things you didn't know were there.

Take care,

LewisC