I’m sure there have been threads about this, but I couldn’t find one, so…
I was Googling something yesterday, and just out of curiosity, I moused over the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, and it rolled over to “I’m Feeling Wonderful”. So I clicked on it, and up came the Google World Wonders Project.
It started me at the Historic Center of Florence, so I wandered around there for a while, and then wondered where else I could go. I thought it would be fun to see Buenos Aires, because I loved visiting there, but they didn’t have it. Then I saw they have the Historic District of Quebec City, where we spent part of our honeymoon. It was awesome to see how much I remembered after having spent just a few days there. So many little details of the trip came back to me. I discovered I could wander all over the city, not just the historic district. I was even able to follow the highway all the way out to Ile d’Orleans, and then around to the other side of the island where we went dogsledding.
Some of the other sites have an external boundary, but for most of them, I think it’s just linked to Google Street View. I like it a lot better than Street View because, at least in my browser, the transitions between views are instant, while Street View does this nausea-inducing, morph-y, blurry, whoosh-y thing. And it’s not just streets; at certain sites, you can “walk around”. The downside is that, unlike Street View, you can’t specify your location within the site you’re viewing. It always starts you at the same place. But it’s still a lot of fun.
So far, I’ve visited Paris, Tel-Aviv, Shirakawa-go, several spots in Ancient Kyoto, Diamantina, Prague, the Great Barrier Reef, Stonehenge, several miles of Route 66, and Scott’s hut in Antarctica (you can look inside). And that’s just a few of the sites they have - which is really just a fraction of the sites they ought to have. It looks like they’re planning to add more, though. I can’t wait.
Happy trails!