Planning a trip is quite easy these days. There are so many travel blogs with itineraries that I often only spend a few hours to get ready for my next adventure. In this post I show you how I use the Google Maps App as my secret weapon, even when I don’t have any internet connection.
Let’s have a look at how I planned my last trip to Japan.
Gather itineraries from different sources
First I google things like
- what do to in Tokyo blog
- most unusual things to do in Tokyo blog
- off the beaten path things to do Tokyo blog
- …
I use “blog” in my search queries to avoid some of the commercial travel sites.
Then I repeat similar searches (without “blog”) on youtube and add all sights and activities that seem interesting for me to a list.
Add your favorites to Google Maps
After all my googling and youtubing I created a bucket a list of things to do in Tokyo. Now it’s time to add all these items to Google Maps and use them offline later!
- Open the Google Maps App
- Search for “Tokyo” (To give google an idea in which city we are looking)
- Search an item on your bucket list f.e. “Kawaii Monster Cafe”
- Click at the bottom of the screen on the Title of the item
- Click on “save” on the detail screen that opened
- Save the item as “Starred places”
Here are some screenshots to illustrate the process.
Search for an item on your bucket list:
The Item will show up on Google Maps, tap on the title at the bottom of the screen:
A new menu will open: call, website, save, label. Tap on “save”:
Choose how you want to save your place f.e. in “Starred places”
You will see that the “Saved” menu item is highlighted:
Use Google Maps offline
Make sure to open google maps app when you have wifi before your trip or in your hotel before you go out. Zoom in to the area that you will visit that day and move the map around so you cover all the starred places you want to explore.
Once you are out and there is no wifi and you don’t have data either you can still open google maps without any connection! On top of that Google Maps will still show the blue dot to indicate where you are. So you can perfectly walk around with google maps, see where you are and walk to your next starred place.
Extra tip: add your hotel(s) to google maps as well. A simple trick that saves me so much time every trip!
It only works for big cities. Google doesn’t provide offline maps for small towns. But you can always rent portable wifi or local sim cards in China before you depart. Portable wifi for Japan can be as cheap as 5RMB in Shanghai. Just place the order online and fetch it at the airport on the day of your flight.
Indeed, that’s how I did it in Japan as well. And in China it will probably only work for the more international cities, as not many people use google maps. Should probably look into offline apple maps in that case as you can navigate around in English.