Google Maps is much more than the most used navigation application in the world. Recently, Alphabet reported that the platform had been added to its list of products with more than 2,000 million monthly active users and much of its success is due to the fact that it not only serves to know the best route to get to a place. It is also useful for searching for information about any store, restaurant, monument, places of interest, museums, etc. If you have ever considered using the app to organize everything you can see in a tourist city in one day, there are several functions that may be useful to you.
Express single-day trips can get complicated if we are not clear about what we are going to visit. Maybe you want to see the basic monuments and sites of interest in a city where you’ll only be there for 24 hours or a weekend, but you don’t know where to start, and Google Maps can help you plan the perfect itinerary so you don’t get lost. No essential corner of the tourist town in question. We show you the tools within the navigation application so that you can make the most of every minute you spend in the municipality.
Search tourist sites on Google Maps
The first step to organize your short trip so that it is unforgettable is to look for tourist places that are relatively close or easily accessible by car. In general, urban environments tend to have more points of interest in the most central areas, so we encourage you to start looking there. It is recommended that you search for the city through Google Maps and zoom in on the urban center area. Normally, the app will mark with icons the places that are most interesting to visit. But sometimes it is difficult to find what you are looking for and it can be helpful to narrow your search with filters.
At the top of Google Maps, you will see a row of available options, such as “Home”, “Restaurants”, “Hotels”, “Supermarkets”… Swipe from right to left to discover all the available filters and click on “More” to see them all on the screen. Generally, the most relevant if you want to look for places to visit in a city are those that appear in the “What to do” section. When we travel to a completely new location that we want to discover and explore, the key filters are “Parks”, “Art”, “Museums” and “Places of interest”. Click on these options and look for the places that are closest to you or that have the best ratings from other users.
Save what you want to see to your account
When you find something that interests you, you can write it down in a notebook, but it is also possible to save it to your Google account. This way, you will have access to the locations you have saved as soon as you open the Google Maps application. This can save you time when searching for places and will ensure that the itinerary you create is not lost at any time.
The only thing you have to do is click on the tourist site that you think is interesting to visit so that all the information available on Google Maps appears. You will get several actions of what you can do with that specific location. For example, ask the app to show you “How to get there”, check the price of “Tickets”, “Call” the establishment… But, if you continue sliding to the right, you will see the option to “Save”, which is the that corresponds to us if we are planning the trip. Click on it and Google will automatically save it to the “I want to go” list or any one you have created and were using for another occasion.
If you want to create an exclusive list for that specific express visit, you must click on «New list«. In that section, you can configure whether you want it to be private or shared, put a name, add a description and change the icon to make it more identifiable on the map.
Offline maps in Google Maps
Another Google Maps feature that can be very useful when traveling is the ability to download parts of the map for offline access. From ADSLZone we recommend that option. Even if it is only a one-day trip, we will be away from home for a long time, without an Internet connection via WiFi. In addition, you will most likely want to upload photos of your stay to social networks, which will consume a lot of mobile data. If we add to that the expense of gigabytes through Google Maps, you may exhaust the data you have with the rate. By downloading the town map, you can avoid this.
To do so, the first step is to search for the city on Google Maps. Afterwards, you just have to select your profile photo in your Google account in the navigation app and click on “Connection Maps”. Once there, click “Select your own map” and mark the area you want to save for offline viewing. Finally, click on the “Download” option and that’s it.
