Travel Tips: How to use Google Maps to Plan Your Travels

hey guys welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is Bernie from Sheeran The World Travel Vlog and I'm a digital Nomad who travels the world full time while working remotely and today I'm going to talk about one of the things I am so so passionate about planning your travels or more specifically how to use Google Maps to plan your travels anyone who knows me or has watched any of my itinerary videos or planning videos before knows I'm a crazy Google map maker and I'm such a visual person that I legit need to see the layout of a city to understand it better and actually feel prepared before I go on my trip so if you're like me or even if you're not and you just want help on how to plan your travels more efficiently you're in the right place so in this video I'm going to be building out a map from scratch here so that way you can follow along while I do it so the first step is your research part right so you have to do research you have to compile a list of all the top things that you want to see in a certain place oh I usually do this is by watching Vlogs and reading blogs and I think it's really important to note here that you do need to know what kind of traveler you are so you know what you should be researching and who you should be getting your research information from you know for example I'm a total budget Traveler I love authentic local experiences and yes of course I'm going to see the main tour sites when I go somewhere but that's not really my main focus and I don't really like shopping or Fuji restaurants so I have to know which blogs and blogs to get my information from that actually matches my travel style I'm actually making a whole separate video on this like how to find that information how to figure out what your travel style is destinations that fit your style best so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on that once you have your list of sites to see we'll start building out our map so now I'm going to focus my attention on actually building out this map so yes I will not be looking at the camera entirely I'll try to turn a little bit but I'm just going to be sharing my screen with you guys and have myself in a tiny box so you can still see me but all right we're good to go so what you're going to be seeing on the screen right now is on the left hand side you see my list so this is what I was just talking about you do have to compile your list of just you know it doesn't have to be that comprehensive but just random ideas random things you've seen on Instagram blogs whatever it is just make a super simple list and then pull up Google Maps so obviously here's my Google Map so the first thing you want to do here is once you're in Google Maps you're going to click saved then you're going to click Maps here you can see all of my psycho Maps because I'm crazy and then you're gonna call it on the bottom and click create map so now this is going to open up a new window this is separate for the map that you're creating so obviously it's going to bring me to the US because that's where I'm at right now but wherever you're going to be traveling to once you type in that first thing on your list so for me I'm doing a keto map today it's automatically going to bring us to keto so let's go ahead and change the title of this keto three days you can add a description if you want to but I'm not going to for the purpose of this then you're just going to you can either copy and paste or you can just start typing in click on it it's going to bring you to where it actually is and you'll click to add it to the map so you're going to continue to do this for all of the things on your list um obviously once you put it on the map you get a little pin here and then you actually start to see that your list will form here so let's put a few more in Mercado Central right down the road add it to the map Independence Square and the good thing is because it's like Google is smart enough to know hey we're dealing with you know the downtown of central Quito right now obviously there's probably a million Central Markets a million independent squares but since our first pin that we dropped was right in the downtown of Quito it's going to keep us there you know for all the things that we're typing in so you don't have to be too too specific all right so now we have all of our pins here you can see them all here they're matching the list that I originally had just with pins like I said so once we zoom out all the way going because I have a few pins up here so now we can see you know all the different pins and how spread out they are one thing that you can do that's super helpful like depending on how much research you've done if you just know like oh I remember seeing that on Instagram or whatever and you're not really going to remember the name it is cool because you can click on a specific pin and you can click this edit button from here you can type in notes like cheap food market under three dollars something like that or if there is like if you're going to a certain place that has an entrance fee I always usually do that is I'll type in the entrance fee right there um just so I can remind myself but you can also add photos so you can upload images that you have saved you can do it from Google anything and so if you have that cool Instagram photo that you know like oh as soon as I see that Instagram photo it's I'm going to be reminded what this place is you can screenshot that and add that to your map so that way when you're looking at this and you're like wait what's that I don't know what that name is you can click on it automatically the description and the photo will pop up so that's super super helpful for places maybe you're not super familiar with so you know now our map is finished and we can start to naturally see what items are kind of near each other and what items are kind of far away so depending on how many days you're going to be there you're going to pick how many colors for how many days you're going to be there so for this one like I said we're gonna do three days that's the title of our map so I'm gonna pick three different colors I'm just gonna pick Ecuador's colors because why not red yellow blue and then we can start to color coordinate them based on their location so that way we can kind of start to separate you know day one day two and day three by the different colors there's no particular order but obviously since these two are really far away I'm going to go ahead and do these ones yellow and then I'm going to separate these ones out based on how far apart they are from each other to do the red and the blue so we'll do we'll keep this section in the middle blue and then I'll go ahead and do this red right here nice dark red go ahead and do that on your map I'm going to do that really quick and when you're finished it should look something like this so we have a very aesthetic map here very visually pleasing we can easily see just by looking at this without zooming in or anything we have three distinct days right based on color and that's my visual brain working right there I'm like yes I love to see those colors my brain automatically knows okay day one day two day three that's awesome so the best part of this too is once you're actually finished with your map you have it color coordinated you have all the comments in there you have photos if that's what you want to do now you can actually share this map with the people that you're actually traveling with so you just go up here and click the share button anyone with this link can view if you want other people to be able to find your map you want to share your hard work with other people you can go ahead and do that um and then if you want them to see your name and photo but obviously if they're people that you're traveling with you probably don't care about that and then you can click the copy button send it to them via text or email whatever it may be and voila now you've created your map you have all your notes you have your photos you've shared it with the people that you're traveling with so they can look at you know what are we doing on this trip um that's usually how it is for me my boyfriend I plan out everything and then we get there and he's like so what are we doing right where are we going I feel like there's always those types of people in the groups that you're traveling with so now you can actually share this with them and kind of fill them in beforehand so once the map is done once you've shared it with other people you do want to make sure that you have Google Maps downloaded on your phone so you can easily access all the maps that you've created by clicking saved maps now you can view you know the whole map The Legend if you have any photos and notes attach exactly like how I was describing on the computer you can see this on your phone and that's obviously what you're going to be using Alexa Alexa stop all right back to filming so obviously your phone is what you're going to be using when you're traveling where you're not going to walk around with your laptop now not even bring your laptop if it's a short trip so that's the best part of this you know when you're actually out traveling you just wake up you're like okay I'm doing the yellow pins today you click on the first yellow pin get directions to go there easy peasy the best part about Google Maps over Apple maps in my opinion is that it's a lot more accurate and has nearly all countries public transportation options and timetables on it so that's super super helpful when you're traveling abroad relying on public transportation to actually get around and do all of these things that you put on your map so there you have it this is how I personally plan out all of my trips and you can plan all your trips this way too let me know in the comments if you've built out a Google map before to plan your travels or if you literally never knew that you could do this I'd love to see where everyone's at make sure to hit that like button if you found this video helpful and subscribe so you don't miss out on digital Nomad and travel tips as I continue my digital Nomad Journey around the world thanks so much for watching I'll see in the next video [Music]

Channel: She Run the World

Views: 66,713

Keywords: google maps, travel planning, google my maps, how to use google maps, how to plan a trip with google maps, how to use google my maps, how to plan a travel itinerary, how to plan a trip, how to make your own travel itinerary, how to plan a vacation, how to plan a vacation with google maps, she run the world, yt:cc=on, travel planning tips, travel tips, travel itinerary, travel itinerary app, travel itinerary template, free travel resource, planning a trip using google maps

Id: dEALDqfgt4s

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023