How We Use Google Maps
It’s 2024. Everyone has a favourite map app, right? Mine for sure is Google Maps. I appreciate the reliable driving directions, but what I super love is using it for travel planning and execution.
When we’re planning a trip, after we’ve booked our accommodation, one of the first things I do is open Google Maps and save the address of wherever we’re staying. After you’ve typed in your location, you’ll get some choices under the address and one of them is “save”. If you tap save, you’ll have the chance to save it to an existing list or save it to a new list (the top option). You can also add a note, so I usually add “hotel in XX”. Then, as we look up places we want to go or things we want to do on that trip I continue to save them on that list.
If we book an activity, I’ll save the loction on the map to this same list, and I’ll add those details (confirmation number, date, time, etc) in the notes section. I also like to add restaurants we visit while we’re on the trip so that I can share them with you. One really nice advantage of making lists and saving addresses is that if you find yourself in an area with less than dazzling data or wifi, it’s easier to load saved address than having to search it up every time. Plus, it makes it easier to recommend trips and excursions to friends in the future.
When you view a list overview, it brings up a map of the city and shows all your saved locations like this.
City image with dropped pins in Google Maps
This is what my saved list looks like in Budapest, a city we’ve visited twice. (Honestly, don’t even look at the one for London. Yikes on bikes.) Saving locations in advance makes it really easy to find things when we’re on the go, and it also makes it easy to get to places we’ve pre-planned. Many Europeans cities (but definitely not all) include their public transport directions in Google Maps, so you can add your destination and Google will tell you how to walk, drive, or bus//train there.
It’s also helpful because we don’t always make reservations for meals in advance, so if it’s getting close to dinner time we can pull up the map and see what’s available near where we are, as well as what’s available near our hotel, and what would be the better choice for that evening. Honestly, this is how I found a very cute little restaurant in Budapest that we definitely would never have found without a good Google Map search.
How do you use Map apps to help you plan or execute travel? I’d love to hear what you do, especially if it’s different to what we do.