Audio tour goes high-tech

BOSTON -- After spending the morning walking the streets of Boston, following the red line that marks the famous Freedom Trail, tourist John Koch couldn't help but exclaim how easy a new audio guide of the city's historic walking tour is to understand.

"For an outsider who is totally uninitiated, it was just great. This guy is right in my ear. He's clear, he doesn't have a Boston accent," Koch said over a beer at Boston's Union Oyster House across from Faneuil Hall, one of the stops on the Freedom Trail.

The trail is a 2 1/2-mile tour that links 16 historic sites. Visitors can follow a red line emblazoned through city streets, linking the sites that stretch between Boston Common and the Charlestown waterfront.

Using a lightweight, hand-held digital device, visitors can guide themselves along the trail while listening to "Hear Freedom!" It was introduced earlier this year to liberate the Boston sightseer from traditional structured sightseeing groups.

"What they'll get out of this is their independence," said Linda McConchie, executive director of The Freedom Trail Foundation. "It's a big step for us because what we are always trying to do is to get people to come back to the Freedom Trail, make our story accessible, make it easy to understand why the story of the Revolution is meaningful to us and also to make it fun."

Featuring the voices of Sen. Edward Kennedy, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman and actors from the Freedom Trail Players, the device can be held up to the ear like a cell phone or used with headphones.

Sightseers can punch a number into the audio box corresponding to each site and hear its history. The tour is designed so sightseers can go at their own pace in any order they choose.

Koch, 48, and his wife Norma Koch, 46, were visiting Boston from Fort Wayne, Ind. They said they enjoyed the convenience of the audio devices.

"We just walk down the street like we're talking on cell phones. I have a really hard time reading something while I'm walking," said John Koch, who just two days earlier ran the Boston Marathon. "It really encapsulates it for us. It gives the essential facts."

People accustomed to leading Freedom Trail tours while playing the part of a character from history agree.

Sam Jones leads tours while portraying William Dawes, one of the Minutemen who rode with Paul Revere. He initially worried the audio guides might attract flocks of walkers away from the old-fashioned tours. "There are people who want to do the trail at their own pace and by themselves but still have the flavor of the Revolution given to them and it's a way that they can do that."