Every child is taught the phrase ‘Sharing is Caring’ right from his or her childhood. ‘Sharing’ for a kid is just sharing his/her toys and chocolates with other kids but as we grow up both sharing and the meaning of the word becomes a conundrum. Google has provided us the opportunity to share our knowledge of our community, our surroundings, our people, our travels and our experiences via Google Maps and Local Guides Connect.
While the world is obsessing about ‘Valar Morghulis’ (GOT lingo for All Men Must Die), I say, not before you travel the world and share your experience about everything you know with the world. After all, life is not meant to be lived in one place!
I am extremely passionate about travelling and exploring new places. I live by the motto – “Cover the Earth before it Covers YOU”. I have a habit of researching a place before visiting. I try to google (the new verb for extensive re-search) everything about a place before I reach there. Preparing myself about the place and locale helps me remain calm even if something in my travel does not go as per my plans because I live by the phrase “Prepare & Prevent rather than Repair & Repent”. I love visiting streets of a city with Google Street View. It gives me an idea of the place before I have even reached there. I always make it a point to browse through reviews of a food joint or a shop I would be visiting, before going. This helps me avoid bad experiences and benefit myself by visiting best places there are.
I would like to share one such travel where I completely relied upon Google Maps for two days for exploring one of the best cities in the world. This was the time when my sibling & I visited the Big Apple. We went to New York in summers of 2017.
We had only two days in hand and gazillion places to visit. Just narrowing down the places that were priority 1 to see, was a painful task. I wanted to see everything in those two days. But as we all know, it’s impossible! Finally, after zeroing down a few places to visit, we had to chalk out the best way to accommodate these places into our two-day schedule.
I plotted all the places I wanted to visit, on Google Maps and then chalked best routes covering most places for both the days.
We marked the beginning of our amazing trip at The Big Apple by going to Ellis Island for the Iconic Statue of Liberty. Okay, being honest, we did not go there first just because it’s iconic, we went in the morning so that we can avoid the rush, as morning slots are relatively less crowded than rest of the day. Google reviews helped us know that. We also got to know from the reviews that we could save a lot of time by purchasing the tickets online and security queue will be very long here. So we purchased the tickets online and I brought my earphones along, to enjoy music on a breezy summer morning at NYC while waiting to board the ferry for Ellis Island. Then we visited East Coast Memorial, Wall Street & Charging Bull, Brooklyn Bridge, and filled our shopping bags at Times Square.
I had the most fun shopping at M&Ms World in Times Square. This place is an entire world of fantasy in itself. As soon as we entered this store we were transported into the chocolaty world of M&Ms. This store has the world’s biggest candy wall! The best part is that you can eat as many M&Ms from the wall as you want ? I loved the Mood Detector, Personalized M&M Maker and wide selection of M&M merchandize.
We started day 2 by visiting Macy’s at Herald Square, which is one of the largest stores in the world. This place had escalators made of wood, which gave us a glimpse of the then America. After Macy’s we headed straight to The Empire State Building. This place offers you the bird’s eye view of the entire city. It is simply amazing to be up there and witness the bustling city from such great height. I liked the zooming elevators because of the ceiling screens in them. While zooming upwards it felt like we were going up with the hundreds of workers who are constructing the masterpiece as and when we are proceeding upwards. On one of the floors they portrayed the history and facts about the place, which was an interesting read. We even got to meet King Kong there ?
The view from 86th floor was spectacular. One could see the entire city from all four sides with the wind flowing through your hair. We ended our trip with Central Park and Times Square again ?
We did majority of our city tour on foot, swaying around the culturally rich yet modern streets of New York City. Our ‘Guiding Star’ was none other than Google Maps.
We found the shortest routes from destination A to destination B; we found the best modes of public transportation to travel longer distances in city; we found best places for vegetarian lunch and snacks in the area; we found the best souvenir shops around. And we did all of these, with the help of Google & Google Maps.
I shared my entire two-day experience to show how Google Maps saved the day for me by being my support system throughout the trip. I receive so much help from the Google Maps (not just on my NYC trip but every single day) that I feel compelled to give something back to the community and share whatever I know, with others in the world. This is the reason I love sharing my reviews, photographs and videos on Google Maps. I like to answer as many questions as I can and check & uncover as many facts as I can.
I have always had the habit of taking random pictures of various places (even in the days when memory space was a constraint). But now I can share my random pictures with the world and it is actually useful to thousands of people who watch those pictures and read my reviews on Google Maps. I am passionate about travelling and I try to contribute whatever little I can to make Google Maps more eco-friendly for people like me who completely rely on Google Maps every single day.
I hope I keep travelling new places and will surely keep sharing my experiences with the world via Google Maps and Connect ?
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