City Walk Apps & Self-Guided Tours | Time to Win One!

Have you heard of City Walk Apps? Traveling today can be enhanced by all the new technology we have, and apps and the idea of self-guided tours is part of that. We, for one, love walking as our favorite mode of seeing a city. What’s your style of city trip? Do you like group tours or self-guided, walking or riding a double-decker bus? Here our some reasons why this new emergence of travel-technology is becoming so popular. And we’d like to hear from you, because yes – you read right – it’s your chance to win a City Walk App for the city of your choice!

Above Image – The Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid.

City Walk Apps Maximize Time

It’s pretty easy now-a-days to find plenty of information on what sites to see in a city. But also knowing how to get from site to site and what routes to take…that can be a different story. With travel apps today, you can calculate more accurately which site to go to first, based on its hours versus the hours of another site. The time it takes to walk and possible routes or order of sites, gets to be completely up to you. If your time is limited, say a full day passing through to another destination, a city walk app can help you visit as many sites as possible. Or if you have a few days, it helps you enjoy it even more as you spread it out over more time.

Now this really comes around to travel-style. For us, we love taking our time to see things and visit a city. Fitting in as many things as possible is not really our thing. We also love walking. That is our preferred method of seeing a place, especially a city. The tool of a city walk app is still helpful to us because we can see what sites there are to see wherever we’re walking at that time; sites that we may have otherwise missed.

Above Image – Valencia Street Art in Barrio del Carmen.

City Walk Apps are for More than Tourist Sites

Sites are great, but traveling is far more than visiting museums (those are great too though!). City walk apps come with insightful commentary and notes on the great local cafe for enjoying the best coffee or where you can stop in for a drink and use free WiFi. They give tips on the boutique store that features handmade artisan products that the region is known for or perhaps what beautiful city-park gives free concerts on summer weekends. Covering a lot of ground in one day? These local commentaries can help you see that there’s a great local restaurant you can hit up just in time for lunch and in between seeing more sites.

If you’re anything like us, enjoying the local food and drink and ‘noshing around’ is one of the biggest joys of traveling! So it’s great to have some insider information.

Above Image – The Basilica de Pilar in Zaragoza.

City Walk Apps are Self-Catered

Yep! We’re referring to that other new development in travel today – the emergence of self-guided tours. Now, tour groups can be great too. Nothing like making new friends when traveling and that can be one way to do so. Yet we especially love self-guided tours so that we can tour a city according to our own travel-style. And that’s where city walk apps are the perfect compliment to self-guided tours.

You can still allow for that element of spontaneity if you come across a local music group playing in a hole-in-the-wall jazz cafe. Find something like that and why not put off your next site for another hour or so!?! We think the biggest joy of walking to see a city is that you get to see the nuances of what is around you. But that also comes about if you’re not busy trying to follow someone with a hot-pink umbrella who’s herding you and a group so you make it on time to the next museum.

Some of our favorite discoveries in our recent city of Valencia, were the amazing works of street-art (click here to visit our extensive Valencia Street Art Album). Everywhere you walk in the city, there’s amazing graffiti on building sides, garage doors, and even large planters. The architecture is another aspect of cities to make sure and take in while strolling about. When we’re walking, we get to appreciate those small details that are distinct to certain time-periods and the culture. Like the hand-painted tiles along the bottom of balconies, the gargoyles perched along a stone bridge or cathedral wall, and one of our personal Valencia favorites, the Valencia bat that is part of their emblem and city symbol.

No matter what you’re style and what you love seeing in a city, city walk apps can cater to how you want to make the most of your city visit.