An Audio Tour of Millennium Park

By Rachelle Bowden in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 5, 2005 11:47AM

Over the weekend Chicagoist had a couple hours to kill and were stuck downtown so we decided to go on the audio tour of Millennium Park that we've been hearing about everywhere. We downloaded the files, transferred them to our iPod (any portable mp3 player will do, but we're Apple dorks), and were off!

In the introductory mp3 it tells you to get a map (PDF) and play the mp3s in a particular order... but we don't really take direction that well so what we did instead was wander around the park and when we were in front of one of the park feature we wanted to hear about we found the mp3 for it and played it. It was a bit out of order, but it worked out just fine anyway.

Chicagoist loves Millennium Park and we're also huge history junkies AND also are technophiles so this whole tour was right up our alley. We don't know if we'd go on it again, but it was great the first time around. Also, we'd been to Millennium Park plenty of times since it opened a year ago, but there were mp3s on attractions we never took the time to look at before. Like the bike station and the Harris Theater. The audio tour was a chance for us to discover these areas. There was also a lot to learn about the familiar areas that we thought we knew everything about.

The tour took us about an hour and we think you should definitely check it out. It's free and if you don't have an iPod you can rent one with the tour on it from the Welcome Center. If you work downtown, swing by on your lunch or after work. It's really cool. We also had the thought that if you weren't able to get to the park, or if you'd visited the park on a trip to
Chicago but don't live here that you could download the mp3s, download a map of the park (PDF), and take a virtual tour right at your desk!

As Chicagoist took the tour, we took a photograph of each park feature with our iPod in the photo playing the mp3 about the feature. Kind of nerdy but really fun. To see all of the photographs, go here.