What does the Local Guides program mean to me?

Artem_Shevtsov · March 29, 2020, 4:35am

Hello everyone, thanks for finding time to read this post. I will begin with quick introduction of myself: my name is Artem Shevtsov, I am

Professional musician and hail all the way from Kaliningrad, Russia. The city is situated on a shoreside of Baltic sea and is very popular vacation destination for many russians. My whole life I was surrounded by the sea, and I love coastal cities. So these two passions of mine followed me throughout my life hand in hand. First nautical travels that I endured took place during my two years of service in the Navy in the rank of sailor. Our military ships visited many ports in the nearby areas of Baltic and North seas. The longest trip lasted two and a half month during which we crossed Straight of La Manche (English channel), Gibraltar, Suez canal all the way down to Capetown, South Africa and back by the Atlantic ocean. This was in 1997. This year marks 17 consecutive years that I have been travelling around the world by sea on board various Cruise Liners. There are still unexplored itineraries on map that I had not visited yet and there are many others that I frequented for its popularity amongst tourists-Alaska coast in United States, Baltic cruises with its European great capitals, Mediterranean countries be it Greek Islands or Italy or Spain…

Each and everyone of the trips you chose has so much to offer and that is where Local Guides program becomes quintessential. Off course you can always resort to prepackaged cliches tours and enjoy that… or get a little more adventurous and explore on your own. When you are in new country each day and time of your stay in port is limited by literally few hours, how you gonna make the best of it? Well, through the miracle of modern technology we have Google Maps and all your questions can be answered in one place. And smartphones, like the one I am typing this post in make things even easier because everything is within reach of your thumb, starting from apps to camera and geolocation. If you see the places I bookmarked and/or reviewed on Google Maps, they all range from either visits for leisure to various businesses, like my visa application trip to Warsaw year ago. I had beautiful time staying for three days right in the heart of the city and I saw a lot thanks to Local Guides. Or imagine, life of crew can be very hectic, you find yourself looking for saxophone repair shop in Boston, Massachusetts or Athens, Greece. Services like that are very job specific and you’d be hard pressed trying to find such without existing recommendations somebody already added. Or, if not, I’d definitely would do it myself for future references. Forgot to mention that I play saxophone that’s why it came up in conversation.

Caption: example of one of my reviews, Windcorp music store in Stockholm, Sweden.

Quite often I provide my reviews with pictures that I was taking for fun. But it turns out people can see the world through my eyes and I find it fascinating and encouraging. I have no doubt that this is beginning of something enormously big and I wish to all Google developers to continue improve this service cause it’s such powerful and important tool. It changed our life and there is no turning back!

P. s. Below please see my photos taken in the Caribbean just this year where I travelled with Seabourn Odyssey:

Caption: King’s Wharf, Bermuda

Dockyard, Bermuda, Somerset Village

Caption: Cruise ship docked in King’s Wharf, Bermuda

Caption: tugboats of Dockyard ,Bermuda

Caption: tugboats of Dockyard, Bermuda

Caption: view on the Bridgetown Cruise terminal harbour in Barbados

Caption: sunset in Barbados

Caption: British Virgin Islands

Caption: Timothy Hill, St. Kitts and Nevis. From top of it you can see how the grid of islands divides waters of Caribbean Sea (right) and Atlantic Ocean (left).