If you glance at my default Google Map, you will see approximately four thousand stars and flags I’ve placed all over the world, not because I’ve been to all of these places, but because I ran across them in an article, on Instagram, or while speaking with friends over dinner. My favorite planning tool is to simply click the Save button and store a place to my default Google Map using a star or flag so I can find it again later. In Google Maps, search for a place and click on it, and as you probably know you can read reviews and view the photographs submitted by fellow Google users. Google Maps allows me to not just prepare for specific trips, but also to build a network of places all over the globe that become useful at totally unpredictable times! For my own personal travels, I typically use the default map, mainly saving places of interest using stars and flags, sneaking a peak of a place using Street View or place images, restaurant reviews, and more. I prefer creating a personal map if I’m designing a trip for someone else so they can access, read, and understand it clearly. You can also share a personal map easily with friends. If you decide you want to create a personal map (Menu > Your Places > Maps > Create Map), there are design perks like color coding or selecting icons as labels for places. Don’t forget to log into your own Google account first, then anything you build or change will be saved to your account and you can access it anywhere. Either way, I promise it’s fun and enormously helpful once you start using it. You can use Google Maps in a couple ways: 1) you can build a personal map for a specific trip, or 2) you can keep it simple and utilize the default map, which you should do whether or not you have a trip in mind. My own Google Map now stores all of my favorite places across the globe, and helps to provide valuable insight and context to guide my every travel whim.

The more you learn to use Google Maps’ many features, the more you will depend on it to plan vacation travel.

Google Maps can do so much to assist you: from storing favorite places to helping you choose a restaurant with the most romantic interior, plus measuring travel times and distances for road trips, hikes, bike rides, and more.

One of my favorite trip planning tricks is taking advantage of the dynamic tools within Google Maps to organize travel ideas.

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