Guide to Planning A Trip: Mapping

In my previous Guide to Planning a Trip post, I explained how I researched and created a wishlist of what I want to do and eat and organized it in a Google Doc. I mentioned in that post how I organize destinations by area so that I can minimize travel time and make the most of where I am by knowing what my options are in that area, whether or not I actually visit them. Today, I share how I create my custom Google My Maps to help me do this.

Knowing where various interest points are oriented to each other can help plan your travel – such as below where we did a walking day visiting scenic streets, shrines, temples, and gardens all in Southeastern Kyoto in Japan a few weeks ago.

The My Maps also is super helpful when I’m there, since I can use it to get directions from place to place. Even if I don’t have wireless/data, I can also if I load the custom map before I go offline, use it alongside GPS to help me get to my destination.

It may seem like with a spreadsheet and custom maps, I must have my trips planned to the hour. But, the opposite is true! Because I am armed with information on where everything is located, when each business may open and close, how much each will cost in money or time, what the various options to choose from are among many choices in the area (including ones I find out from locals or discover passing by once I’m there!) and what others may have thought of them from reading reviews, I feel even more empowered to wing it without FOMO.

And, since getting lost stresses me out, or traveling to a location taking longer than I thought only to find out it just closed is so frustrating for me, mapping stuff to find out where it is and how long it takes to get there by train, car, public transit, walking, whatever is important to me.

Guide to Planning A Trip Part 2: Mapping

Did you know you can create a custom map with multiple destinations that you input? You can also share this map!

To start, open google maps. In the search bar, you should see a “hamburger” menu icon – it has 3 lines and appears on the left side of the search bar.
Guide to Planning A Trip: Mapping. To create your own Custom google maps, go to the hamburger menu in Google Maps

Click on that and click on “My Maps“. If you don’t see My Maps, it may be because you aren’t signed into your Google account – you need to be signed in so the map will associate with you.
Guide to Planning A Trip: Mapping. To create your own Custom google maps, click on My Maps in the Google Maps menu.

Now I have a lot of maps I have created over the years, but the important thing is to look for the “Create Map” at the bottom. What you can see from this is later – for instance my second trip to Hawaii, I was able to reuse my map to revisit some of my favorite stops later with my family that I had visited earlier! I love that this is an investment in making maps rather than re-doing the searches and directions later.
Guide to Planning A Trip: Mapping. To create your own Custom google maps, click on Create New Map in the Google Maps - My Maps menu.

Later, when you come to edit your maps, you will want to open one of the maps you saved, which will show the screen below. You have one extra step where you then click on “Open in My Maps” in order to edit the existing My Map.
Later edit your maps by clicking on the name of your map, and click on Open in My Maps

While I’m on vacation, I only need to click to load the map on my phone and not use “Open in My Maps” in order to use it to navigate with GPS.

When you click on Create Map, it should open a new tab for you to work in. Now, you can just start searching for destinations by typing in the destination name (I always try this first!) or the address or GPS coordinates. Naturally, make sure the result matches what you are looking for, especially if might be multiple locations of a restaurant or multiple destinations called Yasaka Shrine for instance in Japan!
Guide to Planning A Trip: Mapping. When you click on Create Map, it should open a new tab for you to work in. Now, you can just start searching for destinations by typing in the destination name (if you're lucky) or the address or GPS coordinates.

Adding Destinations To Your Map

When the Google Maps search finds a destination, you can add it to a default Untitled Layer by clicking on “Add to map”
Guide to Planning A Trip: Mapping. When the Google Maps search finds a destination, you can add it to a default Untitled Layer by clicking on Add to map
Once you add it to the Untitled layer, feel free to name your Untitled map (such as Kyoto, which is the city here) and the Untitled layer if you want. I usually just use one layer because I don’t tend to need to organize too many destinations. But, you might choose to have one layer for Restaurants, one layer for Museums, one layer for Hikes, etc. if you have a lot of different categories you want to divide in.

I personally like to keep it in one layer because I’m too lazy to want to click between layers. Instead, I use customizing icons to differentiate between the different places by clicking on the paint icon when you mouse over the new pin you have added.
Guide to Planning A Trip: Mapping. I use customizing icons to differentiate between the different places by clicking on the paint icon when you mouse over the new pin you have added.

Instead of changing colors of pins, I select “More icons” button at the bottom.
I use customizing icons to differentiate between the different places by clicking on the paint icon when you mouse over the new pin you have added.

Then I pick a bed to stand for my lodging, train for train station, fork/knife for restaurant, faucet for beer places, etc! There are lots of different icons you can use here, or you can even add your own icon you have an url to grab. Pick something that is meaningful that you will remember.
I use customizing icons to differentiate between the different places by clicking on the paint icon when you mouse over the new pin you have added.

I usually don’t end up using too many icons and thankfully the application remembers your most used other icons so you can quickly get to them again later!
I use customizing icons to differentiate between the different places by clicking on the paint icon when you mouse over the new pin you have added.

If you searched by an address or GPS, you can edit the resulting destination to a name that means something to you, such as “Beginning of XXX Hiking Trail” or even edit details in the description if you’d like by adding an url, comments, etc.
When adding a destination to your custom Google My Maps, you can edit the resulting destination with a name or additional comments and such that are helpful to you

Using Your My Maps

I can only speak to my Android where when I open Google Maps, I can choose “Your Places“, which is the equivalent of the My Maps on the desktop and I can pick what I want to open based on my map name (such as Kyoto, Tokyo, etc.”. This then loads up the map.
Looking at my custom Google My Maps on my Maps app on my Android phone

I can zoom in to click on any of my destinations I have placed (as well as search for new ones if I’m online still) then use the directions icon (in the bottom right of the screen, it’s the arrow button) to navigate myself there via car, public transit or walking.
Looking at my custom Google My Maps on my Maps app on my Android phone

The few times I used taxis, the My Map turned out helpful to even show the driver the general area we needed to go since they could be unfamiliar with the street address. And even with my data turned off, I used the GPS to make sure I was on track even as we wandered our way exploring the neighborhoods on the way from one destination to the other walking.
Looking at my custom Google My Maps on my Maps app on my Android phone

Using My Maps was also great in giving me a visual overview of where all the various places I am interested in are located. Based on this, I pick my lodging to be convenient to getting to everything, or to be in the heart of where there are a lot of restaurants, etc. It also helped narrow some things off my wishlist because they were too out of the way.
Looking at my custom Google My Maps on my Maps app on my Android phone

When I’m on the go on vacation, this pre-work on a computer saved me the annoyance of trying to search and find places on my phone. This pre-work also gives you an initial orientation to your destination so that you know where various things are in location to each other in the city!

I’ve also used this to craft a progressive meal in New York, and a drinking/nightclub crawl in Montreal. While I may only make a travel Google Doc spreadsheet for a trip of 5 days or more, I make custom Google Maps all the time even for a day trip to map stops to see, eat, and drink even for a single day.

Have you ever made a custom Google Map? How do you plan the locations you visit in a day on a trip? Do you think I’m crazy?

Here’s a summary of my Japan Travel post series:

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Guide to Planning A Trip: Research

Hello, and happy 2016! I hope so far, your first week of 2016 is going well!

If you are following me on Instagram, then you know I have just recently returned from a holiday trip where I spent Christmas and New Year’s in Japan! I spent about 17 days there.

Day 5 in Japan has the theme of kawaii or cute. We visited the Calico Cat Cafe in Shinjuku where I fed some shredded chicken as treats to kitties, and we visited the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka before stops at Nakano Broadway and Kabukicho. You need to buy tickets to the museum a month ahead but it’s well worth it as it is very thoughtfully crafted as an exploratory experience for all ages and full of wondrous details. Yes that’s a kitty wearing a Christmas cape. #kawaii #shinjuku #calicocatcafe #catcafe #catcafetokyo #cat #cats #kitty #kittycafe #ghibli #ghiblimuseum #totoro #laputa #Susuwatari #sootsprites #mitaka #japantrip #japantravel #tokyotravel #tokyo #asiatravel #asia #traveljournal #travel #traveljapan #pechfredjapan2015

A photo posted by Pechluck Laskey (@pechluck) on

This was a dream trip for me in that I have always loved the idea of Japan travel, and in college at one point I had various postcards of scenes of spring and winter in Japan hanging on my dorm wall. Although I’ve been through Japan before, it was either passing through (so barely outside the airport) or focused on work in Tokyo, so I never had the leisure to really see the places I had dreamed about.

Lately, with the great (well, for us in the US) exchange rate and catching a fare sale to Japan, I got to make that dream finally come true. I have a long series of posts planned to go through the various experiences I had, but I first wanted to share how I do my preparations beforehand in planning a trip.

I hope this will be helpful in giving you some insight on what I do, and perhaps give you ideas on how to plan a trip for yourself, whether it be domestic or international, multiple countries, one country, a region, state, or just a city.

Guide to Planning A Trip Part 1: Research

I am very thorough when I plan a trip- it’s when my feeling of the Fear of Missing Out once I have already taken the journey to a destination becomes most pronounced. At the same time, although I want to know options of things to do (and EAT!) beforehand because I’m not the type to generally just relax in my hotel room, I also balance it with not going crazy trying to hit a big checklist doing everything and anything only to return home exhausted.

I always start my planning with research. This usually is a mix of

  1. Reading the list of activities and restaurants on Tripadvisor. They have ranked lists based on reviews, and you can also read and ask questions in their forums.
  2. Google searching for lists and blog post experiences and even YouTube videos (for instance “Top Things to do in Kyoto”)
  3. Asking friends
  4. Borrowing some travel guides from the library

I enter information on the destinations I’m interested in from these sources – whether it be copying and pasting from 1 & 2, entering notes from 3, or typing in information from 4, into a Travel Google Doc, specifically a spreadsheet.

The main 5 reasons for using Google Docs are

    1. Gather all the information in one place, across all the sources.
    2. Since it’s electronic I can easily add to it and organize it via cutting and pasting or adding to it unlike on paper.
    3. Since it’s Google Docs, I can reference it from anywhere, anytime be it work, home, downtime on public transit, or when I’m on the actual vacation.
    4. Since it’s Google Docs, I can share it with others who are going on the trip with me or my family so they know where I am.
    5. Years later if I return to a destination, I can easily pull it up again to revisit places I enjoyed, or be reminded of places I wanted to go but missed last time. I also use this if someone asks me for recommendations to remember highlights even from years ago.

How to Plan A Trip: List of Vacation Stuff documents in Google Docs that I can get to anytime anywhere and share with others and reference years later

I always use a spreadsheet because I like using tables so I can break it up into rows with multiple columns for the same destination so I can categorize information for easy scanning within each column. I usually will have

    • a column for the name of the destination (such as a national park, a museum, a restaurant)
    • a column for the area (for Japan this was a city, but for smaller places like when visiting a city like Denver, I may break it up into neighborhoods like RiNo or Downtown or Boulder). As I go, I will group destinations that are in the same area together so I can minimize travel time by seeing things all in the same area on the same day.
    • a notes column where I will quickly identify what is interesting about that destination, an address and phone number, hours of operation. This is very useful that it’s all right there so I can immediately see when things open and close and plan accordingly.
    • I also will have another column for cost. This is an estimated cost if there is an admission fee for instance to a museum or general cost per person for a meal. This helps me ballpark what to budget for the trip activity and may make me decide to do or not do the destination.
    • I then have multiple columns for website addresses/URLs. This is a huge time saver because after finding a good reference such as a blog review of someone’s experience, or a news article highlighting the destination, I may or may not easily find that information again. One of the URLs will also be to the actual site for that destination. That way I don’t have to search for it again.

How to Plan A Trip: Example of Things to Do wishlist for Japan in my Google Doc while trip planning

  • If I am planning the trip with others, I might share the sheet and add additional columns where they can add their notes or rankings (1-10) on how much they would like to go to that destination.

There are other (what others may call crazy) things I do, such as eventually make a new tab within the same Google Doc where I will organize this information into my actual travel itinerary instead of my wishlist. At that point, I’ve made the cut based on areas and cost and time of what are actual considerations for the trip this time. I personally also like to color-code the days to make it easy to scan. The itinerary is not set in stone – but it narrows down my wishlist into the realistic “will do” and “might do” options only.

The wishlist also stays separate because once I move it into my itinerary, some of the columns such as Area aren’t needed anymore and I will pare down the information of what’s interesting in the notes column. I usually update the cost column when I’m actually on vacation to what I actually spent so continually track my spending while on vacation also. At the bottom of the sheet, I summed up everything spent. In some cases, there may be additional breakouts such as who paid for what, or conversion of currency (this trip I accounted for US dollars, Canadian dollars, and the Japanese yen), or what was cash vs credit card that I’ll resolve with statements online. I add rows for unexpected activities or costs as well as they come up.
How to Plan A Trip: Example of my Itinerary which I color code by day and narrow down the information and track costs while on vacation

You can do this research step even when you are still in the dream vacation state – you can see how it might help determine how long you stay. It definitely made a difference for me in that I ended up planning a longer trip than initially based on my list, and when I summed up the cost I increased my vacation budget.

In my next post, I will go into the second thing I generally start to create in planning my trip: a custom vacation Google My Maps. Based on seeing the areas I am interested in, I then begin to focus in on where I will be staying/reserving lodging. Stay tuned!

What do you think of my first planning actions? What do you do in starting to plan for a trip?

Here’s a summary of my Japan Travel post series:

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