As y’all can see by Instagram and my lack of consistent blog posting, 2019 has been another year of travel for me. So far, I’ve been to 15 cities and have at least 4 to go. I regularly share travel guides to places I spend more than a night or two in – check out: Palm Springs, London, Portugal, and Marrakech. And I promise to get to New York City, and New Orleans before 2020.
Most of the time when I travel, I like to wing it. Have a list of recommended restaurants, but just do what feels right in the moment. The exception to that is on a big trip when I’m trying to fit a lot in, I like to go in with a plan.
When we went to Austin in March, my friend Haley over at A Walk In The Pink Park, put some recommendations we got on My Maps so we could see where everything is. Today, I’m going to share how I now use My Maps to plan a vacation.
How I Use My Maps To Plan A Vacation: What Is It, exactly?
My Maps is part of Google Maps and allows you to plot points, color code, and make notes. Basically, every organization-lover’s dream. You can zoom in / out, look for other spots nearby, and easily find websites, physical addresses, and phone numbers as recorded in Google. And you can share with other collaborators if you have a travel buddy or three.
How I Use My Maps To Plan A Vacation: Location, Location, Location
Especially with a city as spread out as London, it’s easy to lose time bouncing from one spot to the next. This gets even crazier when you aren’t familiar with the neighborhoods. So how I use My Maps to plan a vacation is to identify nearby spots and hit them all at once. This also helps you stay on foot walking short distances between closer places instead of jumping in an Uber every time.
The platform allows you to plot directions from one place to the next and save them for when you’re ready to go. Here’s an example of getting from lunch to shopping to a museum. It was easy to see that we should go to Harrods before the museum, since it was on the way – something you might not realize otherwise.
How I Use My Maps To Plan A Vacation: Making Decisions
The hardest part of planning any trip is choosing which 6 of 15 recommended restaurants you’re going to make time for. Sometimes, the narrowing down process will come from location. This is where color coding really comes in handy.
In the map for my London trip, I noted restaurants in blue, things to do in yellow, and shopping in pink. I also put a house icon over the address of where we were staying as well as a star icon over the nearest Starbucks – because, duh.
When I wanted to think about only where we were going to eat, I focused on the blue dots to study the list.
As I’ve become more advanced, I’ve realized you can create different layers for categories and click on and off the view. So, if I were to create this map again, I’d make a layer for restaurants and still keep all the points blue. That way, I could see the categories together and on their own.
How I Use My Maps To Plan A Vacation: Collaboration!!
(Copyright Veronica Taylor, for personal use only)
One of the best features is the ability for multiple people to make edits and plot points. You can share the map just like you do with any Google Doc or you can share a view only if you’re not open to discussion. 😉 This is a great tool for traveling with friends so everyone can mark their preferences.
How I Use My Maps To Plan A Vacation: Spontaneous Decisions
Even if you prefer spontaneous travel, My Maps can still come in helpful! Simply mark anything you’ve heard of before you go. Then, if you find yourself starving in a museum, you can easily find restaurants nearby that might be better than the first McDonald’s you see. You don’t have to have the whole day planned out to put your map to good use!
Have you used My Maps to plan a vacation before? If so, what did you like about it? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks for getting the most out of it!
Leave a Reply