Customize with Icons and ColorsĪfter adding your destinations, you’ll wind up with a categorized itinerary of sorts in the sidebar. Voila – a perfect way to plan the days out! It’s not a strict schedule, but rather just a loose sense of where you’ll be and what you’ll want to hit up while you’re around there. On the map above it’s obvious that your activities are falling into two neighborhoods that are far away from each other, so it’s clear what activities you should plan to do on the same day. This is my favorite thing about the custom Google map – now you can see at a glance which things you should group onto the same day, based on what is near what. You’ll notice that when you add a destination to the map, in addition to showing up on the sidebar, it drops a little blue pin on the map itself. If you accidentally forget to hit the correct Layer while adding destinations, it doesn’t matter – you can just drag the destination into the right Layer in the sidebar. The hotel will pop into your sidebar under the “Hotel” layer, as you can see above.Ĩ. Keep adding destinations to your map in the same manner, by simply clicking on the name of the Layer you want it under, typing the destination in the search bar, and then clicking “add to map” when the box pops up. As you can see above, the destination (your hotel, in this instance) will show up on the map along with a box which gives info on that place – the address, website link, etc. Click “add to map.” Click on it, and the map will zoom in to the destination.ħ. Simply type your hotel name or address into the search bar up top, and it will pop up. Since our first layer is “Hotel,” (your home base for the trip), add that first. Keep going until you have all of the categories you want (and don’t worry about being too thorough, you can easily add and/or remove categories and Layers as you go). So just keep clicking “add layer,” and when “Untitled Layer” pops up, click on that, and name it. And don’t worry if you’re confused about what exactly a “Layer” is – it will make sense as you continue.ĥ. You can get as creative and specific as you want – you could make a layer called “Places to Instagram.” I did mine by category so I’ll continue with that example. You could categorize by neighborhood – all destinations on the Upper East Side, all destinations in the West Village, etc. You could categorize your map by days, in which you put all of your activities for each day under that heading. You can make Layers by category, such as “Restaurants,” “Parks and Gardens,” “Cafes,” etc. Next click on “add layer.” Here is where you can customize based on how you want your map to be organized. Make Layersģ. First click where it says “Untitled Layer.” Name the layer “Hotel.”Ĥ. Give your map a name by clicking on Untitled Map and filling in a name. Go to /mymaps and click on “Create a New Map” at the top left.Ģ. So here are the step-by-step instructions (and bear in mind, I’m not an expert – this is just how I use it and it works really well for me!). Once you make a map with all of your want-to-sees and want-to-dos, it becomes really easy to build a loose itinerary and schedule – on Monday, you’ll do all of the things that are clumped in this area, and Tuesday all of the things clumped in this neighborhood, etc. walking right near something you wanted to see but missing it because you didn’t realize it was right there! That would drive me nuts. When you have tons and tons of things you’re planning to do all over a big city, it becomes really hard to keep track of it all – and a custom Google map makes it super easy to keep track of it all. By creating a map that tags all of the things you want to see and do, it makes it so much easier to plan your days and avoid 1. The reason I like a custom Google map is because when you’re traveling, you obviously have lots of stuff you want to do, but a limited amount of time in which to do it all. I’m excited to share this tutorial because it’s actually so easy once you figure it out. When I mentioned last week that I had created a custom Google map for my upcoming Paris trip, a reader named Cara asked for a tutorial – so here it is! At first I was pretty intimidated by the My Maps feature on Google and didn’t understand how to use it – when you first open it it can look a little daunting.
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