In 2015, Lonely Planet published the top 500 places to visit in the world. For a life-long wanderer, it is both pornographic and unattainable…

The list features a stunning array of amazing places. Here are the top three:

Sadly these three places are on three different continents. It’s enough to make a vagabond’s feet ache. But, what is a person, even one who is passionate about travel, supposed to do with a monstrous list of 500 places?  It’s hard to know where to even begin…

I didn’t even know where some of these places were…

So, I thought about trying to rank them in order of the most important, like Lonely Planet did, or the easiest/cheapest to get to.

But, the first ranking is really a judgement call: what’s important to me may not be important to you. And, the second idea depends on where you are now and ever-changing airfares. The only reasonable way I could wrap my head around this monster list was to group things together geographically.

So, I spent a couple of hours typing the 500 destinations plus the U.S. National Parks into Google Maps and starring them to create this map:

<

This way, I could see what is nearest to me when I am traveling, plan my vacations around clusters of interesting places, and ask critical questions about these destinations.

You can expand the map, zoom in on the country or continent you’re interested in, and zoom in further to view each starred location.

When you click on the star, you can find out what’s there and get the link to the location on Google Maps. If you click on the link, you can look at photos of the place, and even get directions there. You can also send the information to your phone.

Is it worth it to fly thousands of miles, take a series of buses, and hike deep into a rainforest to see something?

So, now you can see if a Grand Tour of Europe is totally worth your while.  And, if what your friend said about Utah is true. To me, it says “US National Park Roadtrip!”

But, this map also made me ask some questions:

Why is it so pro-Europe?

Were there a large number of Israelis on the committee?

Is there really nothing of interest in the vast expanses of Russia east of Moscow or Kazakhstan?

Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

-S