I like walking. I walk at least a mile every day, just to stay in some sort of shape while I'm waiting for a recently injured tendon in my lower back to heal.
But I've always loved walking as a way of exploring the place where I live. I was born in the UK, and I've lived for periods of between six months and eight years in cities outside England: Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and now Chicago. Soon after I arrived in each of those places, I would get out onto the streets with a Walkers' Guidebook in hand, following the different itineraries to famous and not-so-famous places. Even when I lived in London, I used to do this sort of thing, doing the south-west London river walk that ended up in Kew Gardens; the East End Jack the Ripper walk; the Bloomsbury walk; and so on. It's a great way to get to know a city, and needless to say you see so much more than taking even a bus tour.
Nowadays, there are some great apps out there that enable you to do all of this using a GPS-enabled phone. And as a matter of fact, the people at GPSMyCity.com have just such City Guides for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch -- more than 2,000 of them, in fact.
They have kindly made three of these city walk iPhone apps available, free, to each reader of this blog who emails quiz@gpsmycity.com with the correct answers to the following quiz. Each app would normally retail for close to $5, but if you answer the quiz correctly and email your answers to quiz@gpsmycity.com, you can get three walking tour apps to cities of your own choice.
So, pens at the ready ..... Go!
One more time: email your answers to quiz@gpsmycity.com.
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But I've always loved walking as a way of exploring the place where I live. I was born in the UK, and I've lived for periods of between six months and eight years in cities outside England: Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and now Chicago. Soon after I arrived in each of those places, I would get out onto the streets with a Walkers' Guidebook in hand, following the different itineraries to famous and not-so-famous places. Even when I lived in London, I used to do this sort of thing, doing the south-west London river walk that ended up in Kew Gardens; the East End Jack the Ripper walk; the Bloomsbury walk; and so on. It's a great way to get to know a city, and needless to say you see so much more than taking even a bus tour.
Nowadays, there are some great apps out there that enable you to do all of this using a GPS-enabled phone. And as a matter of fact, the people at GPSMyCity.com have just such City Guides for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch -- more than 2,000 of them, in fact.
They have kindly made three of these city walk iPhone apps available, free, to each reader of this blog who emails quiz@gpsmycity.com with the correct answers to the following quiz. Each app would normally retail for close to $5, but if you answer the quiz correctly and email your answers to quiz@gpsmycity.com, you can get three walking tour apps to cities of your own choice.
So, pens at the ready ..... Go!
1) Chicago is known under several names. How isn't it called?
a) the Windy City
b) the City of Big Shoulders
c) the City of Lights
2) Chicago’s downtown area is known as ... .The nickname refers to the area encircled by the elevated train tracks.
a) the Loop
b) the Hook
c) the Ellipse
a) the Windy City
b) the City of Big Shoulders
c) the City of Lights
2) Chicago’s downtown area is known as ... .The nickname refers to the area encircled by the elevated train tracks.
a) the Loop
b) the Hook
c) the Ellipse
3) Chicago is the birthplace among others of McDonalds, the chewing gum giant Wrigley’s and the cell phone giant Motorola. What sport has been invented here:
a) 16-inch softball
b) baseball
c) squash
4) At the time of its completion in 1974 the Willis Tower was the tallest building in the world, surpassing the World Trade Center towers in New York, and it held this rank for nearly 25 years, How many states are visible from its roof?
a) 3
b) 4
c) 5
5) Chicago is the third largest city in United States, its metropolitan area, commonly named "Chicagoland,"being the 27th most populous metropolitan area in the world. What American cities are more populous than Chicago?
a) New York and Houston
b) Los Angeles and New York
c) Philadelphia and New York
6) Chicago is home to the largest population of ... in the world, except Warsaw:
a) Poles
b) Czechs
c) Serbs
7) In 1900, Chicago successfully completed a massive and highly innovative engineering project. Since then the Chicago River is the only river in the world that:
a) flows North in the Northern Hemisphere
b) flows backward
c) the only river in the world that flows both northwards and southwards across the line of the Equator
8) Each year, the Chicago River is dyed green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick is the patron saint of what country?
a) Ireland
b) Scotland
c) Poland
9) The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the largest and most extensive collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world. Which of these painters was not an impressionist:
a) Monet
b) Cezanne
c) Dali
10) The University of Chicago is the site of the world's first:
a) 16-inch softball
b) baseball
c) squash
4) At the time of its completion in 1974 the Willis Tower was the tallest building in the world, surpassing the World Trade Center towers in New York, and it held this rank for nearly 25 years, How many states are visible from its roof?
a) 3
b) 4
c) 5
5) Chicago is the third largest city in United States, its metropolitan area, commonly named "Chicagoland,"being the 27th most populous metropolitan area in the world. What American cities are more populous than Chicago?
a) New York and Houston
b) Los Angeles and New York
c) Philadelphia and New York
6) Chicago is home to the largest population of ... in the world, except Warsaw:
a) Poles
b) Czechs
c) Serbs
7) In 1900, Chicago successfully completed a massive and highly innovative engineering project. Since then the Chicago River is the only river in the world that:
a) flows North in the Northern Hemisphere
b) flows backward
c) the only river in the world that flows both northwards and southwards across the line of the Equator
8) Each year, the Chicago River is dyed green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick is the patron saint of what country?
a) Ireland
b) Scotland
c) Poland
9) The Art Institute of Chicago has one of the largest and most extensive collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the world. Which of these painters was not an impressionist:
a) Monet
b) Cezanne
c) Dali
10) The University of Chicago is the site of the world's first:
a) atomic reaction
b) unmanned flight
c) extraterrestrial encounter
b) unmanned flight
c) extraterrestrial encounter
One more time: email your answers to quiz@gpsmycity.com.
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