Beware Madame La Guillotine
With every step you take in Paris you are walking over ground that has thousands of years of history. You can read books and try to re-create some of those moments yourself. You can hire a historian and do a walking tour, usually covering lots of ground and (depending on the tour) barely audible due to the crowd hovering around the guide.
Or you can hire a private tour guide, organize a time, and hope for good weather and good information.
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But what if you could pace your own adventure and follow the exact footsteps of an 18th-century murderess right in the palm of your hands? To learn the intimate details and follow the intriguing paths of a historical treasure hunt from your phone.
You can visit the Palais Royale.
Or you can experience it.
That's exactly what you can do if you download an App that launched this week. Beware Mme (Madame) la Guillotine app was designed by Sarah Towle, an American expat living in Paris whom my blogging bud Karin of An Alien Parisienne did a remarkable interview and tour post that is far better than what I could repeat here. It is now a book too!
The story behind the woman who created this time travel technology is just as interesting as the application itself! Karin did an excellent job in her special report and I encourage you to take a moment to read it. Bonjour Paris also did a nice little write up on her.
There is so much history packed into this little Paris iPhone app, it is perfect for a solo tourist, a couple, or even the whole family (recommended for children 12 and up). From Sarah's website: “track Charlotte as she traverses Paris in pursuit of her victim, passing through the following points of interest: Palais Royal, Louvre Courtyards, Seine River, Pont des Arts, Café Procope, Place St. Michel, Palais de Justice, and the Conciergerie.” Wow, those are some amazing places!
I have purchased the app and I am going to do this tour myself on my next trip to Paris (I seriously cannot wait!). The iPhone application just launched this past Tuesday and needs some help with initial reviews, etc. So if you live in Paris (as many of my readers do) then I encourage you to buy this application and try it out.
If you don't live in Paris but are considering visiting, buy it for your upcoming trip! You are also supporting a small businesswoman who fostered an idea and saw it through to completion with a lot of hard work and research and grassroots efforts.
Ooh, what a fabulous app! (and mon favourite moment in French history has to be Bastille Day!) Bon weekend Andi!
Thanks so much for the wonderful shout-out here, Andi! And hey, no dissing your own presentation — what you wrote is great & I know will be very appreciated by Sarah, too. Thank you for buying the app. It’s a really cool tour and I know it will be a lot of fun when you get a chance to do it. I really hope that the tour will be successful because I would like to see many more of its kind. I know this would be a preferred way for me to see sights in Paris — history, with an emphasis on STORY, makes seeing sights that much more meaningful and interesting.
A fave moment in Paris history? So, so many. I would have to say perhaps the Liberation of Paris in 1944, and all it represented for the country, and for the world. But I am with Susan in that the French Revolution, starting with the storming of the Bastille is right up there, too.
Thank you again, Andi, for featuring Sarah’s StoryApp, and Time Traveler Tours, as well as my post about it. It’s so nice to, as you write, feel a grassroots movement with this product, and to be in on the promotion of something that has really been started from the ground up by a very creative individual!
All I can say – cool! I’m not tech saavy and don’t see myself doing this (plus, who has time to walk around? I’m already walking around in circles with my unfinished travaux). But kudos to the person who thought this up.