WHERE I’D RATHER BE ...
Ilove a history tour. Whether a scramble through a city’s underground, a corny ghost walk or an open-top bus, seeing a city with a local is a great travel experience and the best way to learn the history of a place.
And thanks to a few enterprising souls out there, there are still tours to be had.
LONDON
Sarah from @look_uplondon is a Blue Badge guide (this UKspecific certification takes two years of intense study and exams, so these guides really know their stuff) and runs a history blog, lookup.london. She’s continuing her guiding business online by offering tours of the East End, Soho and other historic areas via her Instagram account. Three times a week she creates a Powerpoint presentation which she then screenshares to Instagram, taking viewers on a virtual walk with the use of Google maps, her own photographs and historic images. In recent weeks she’s featured Waterloo, Trafalgar Square, Mayfair, Borough and Aldgate. Each tour is fascinating -— from hidden gardens and alleyways to the medieval sex industry — so do consider sending a few bob her way on Paypal if you tune in.
Steve Hunnisett — an accredited battlefield guide — is conducting Blitz tours of London via his Twitter account @blitzwalker. Using Google Street View and an archive of historic photographs, he talks readers through the history of the Luftwaffe’s nine-month bombing of London.
JODPHUR, INDIA
The Fort of Jodhpur — Mehrangarh — sits 120m above the city, and is one of the largest forts in Rajasthan. You can take an online VR tour of the site (indiavrtours.com/
jodhpur), then visit the Mehrangarh Museum Trust’s online archives (mehrangarh.org).
AMSTERDAM
If it’s art history you’re interested in, the Rijksmuseum
(rijksmuseum.nl) in Amsterdam has 80 galleries to explore on its interactive tour, at Google Arts & Culture (artsandculture.google.com/partner/rijksmuseum).
Explore 800 years of Dutch art and history, and see masterworks from the Dutch Golden Age including Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. One of the world’s most famous paintings, the tour takes you right up close and guides you through different elements of the image, such as the use of light to illustrate the picture’s most important players, and where in the painting you may find Rembrandt himself.