Easy on the Ears

The latest trend with sightseeing walks is downloading free podcast-style audio tours to your iPod or MP3 player. The advantage of an audio tour, accompanied by a map, over a more prosaic travel guidebook is the use of a variety of experts talking about subjects they know best. Take the hourlong BOSTON HARBORWALK TOUR (bostonharborwalk.com/audio_tour/downtown.html), which leads you to 18 sites, from Christopher Columbus Park in the North End to the John Joseph Moakley US Courthouse in South Boston, and you'll hear Mayor Menino welcome you, followed by a member of the Massachuset tribe discussing Native American settlement along the harbor, and a trainer from the New England Aquarium talking about seals.

A second MP3 tour offered by the city brings you to FORT POINT CHANNEL (bostonharborwalk.com/audio_tour/fortpoint). You'll check out local favorite Lucky's Lounge, hear sculptor Ana Crowley describing life in an artist-owned co-op, and see where Martin Sheen's character fell to his death in the Academy Award-winning The Departed.

CAMBRIDGE has also gotten in on the MP3 act, offering a 60- or 90-minute tour from Brattle Street down to the Charles River (cambridge-usa.org/global/mobile.php). Meghan Day, a 2006 Harvard graduate and Let's Go author, is your host as she introduces you to an eclectic mix of Cantabrigians like Brother Blue, a street poet, and Brother Kevin Hacket, a monk who brings you to a favorite meditation spot, a monastery on the Charles.