I was starting to feel a bit anxious about my trip to Toronto and I couldn’t explain why.  Then I started mapping things out and the anxiety went away.  Turns out I feel better about traveling somewhere when I have a game plan.

I think I’ve mentioned how I make lists of “What I have to see”, “What I’d like to see” and “What I’d see if I had time and was in the area”; but it was many moons ago.  And if I can’t remember it then it must not have happened – right?  Besides, there’s more to my process.  Much more.

It involves a list of places and Google Maps.

First I create a new personal map (usually named after the place I’m going – this one is called T-Dot).  Then I start looking for the places/restaurants/museums I’d like to visit, tagging them, and saving them to the map.  What I end up with is a map with a bunch of little pinpoints on them.

Once I figure out how to work the new Google Maps (which isn’t quite as user friendly as the old Google Maps), I’ll start customizing this.  In the old maps I could put a little airplane at the location of the airport.  I could also colour the points so that I had a rough idea of what each one was (purple for theatre; blue for shopping; yellow for eats).  I’m pretty sure that you can do this on the new maps…

[Goes away for a few minutes]

Yup, you can do it – and more.  You just need to click on the individual thing (the name in the list on the left side, not the dot).

So Purple = Theatres; Red = Museums/Sights; Yellow = Shopping; Blue = Food.  So far I can see that there’s not much next to some of the theatres, but there’s a cafe one of my friends recommended near the ROM.

I still have more stuff to input, but this is the rough idea.  I know that I can go to a certain area and shop/eat/catch a show without having to worry about hopping a subway/bus/streetcar.

Voila!  My own person travel map!

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NOTE: Due to the crazy amount of things I have going on right now I’ve been thinking of changing the updates to Monday & Thursday.  3 times a week isn’t as easy as it used to be, and Fridays are too crazy for blogging.  Hopefully this will result in fewer dropped posts.