I had long wanted to see Europe at Christmas, and everything just fell into place this time. I found cheap tickets, and the main goal was to attend André Rieu’s concert in Maastricht.
But since it all happened spontaneously, I had almost no time to prepare. I picked the cities, but as much as I love planning, I didn’t have time to map out detailed itineraries within them.
I remembered that my family had successfully used the Voxtour.ai audio guide for a tour in Tokyo, so I checked it out. Oh, lucky me—there are three tours available in Cologne and one in Maastricht. So, I decided to rely on it.
Today we spent the day in Cologne. We went through the entire audio tour, plus about half more, since we kept getting distracted by nearby attractions. We visited the Literaturhaus Köln, the Belgian Quarter, Cologne Cathedral, Alter Markt, and much more. The audio guide did a fantastic job! I really liked it—the stories were engaging, perfectly balanced between artistic flair and informative content.
We made some adjustments to the tour to suit us—for instance, we skipped a few points (my husband flatly refused to start the day with a historic cemetery, and I can’t blame him ) but added some others instead. We learned so much new stuff!
What I particularly liked is that, aside from the main tour, the map features plenty of other attractions you can explore and listen to. I’ve tried a few other audio guides, and they don’t offer this—they only provide a fixed route with no room to deviate. But here, you can check the map, find something that interests you, take a detour, listen to the guide, take some photos, soak it all in, and then return to the route. Long story short—we’re fans for now. You can find this tour in Cologne below and listen to it right away.
As for the downsides, I would probably tweak the route a bit—remove some points and add others, tailoring it more to my preferences. Hopefully, this customization feature will be added someday.
Another thing I’d love is an app because I kept forgetting the website name—was it tour? Tours? .com? .something?
Christmas in Cologne is beautiful—festive, lively, and crowded. Everywhere you look, you want to buy something. Thank goodness we’re flying home with personal item only—no room for extra luggage! Otherwise, I’d have bought everything…
Next stop is Maastricht. I’ll do the whole thing and report back!
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