Erratic points of interest = my personal Google Maps list of interesting spots I’ve found during my travels that you can use.

I imagine most of us use Google Maps for navigation and finding places at this point, because they’re pretty much the best in the business. Although I like to keep my location history off, because Google’s amount of spying makes me a bit uncomfortable, I still like to save all the interesting spots I come across during my travels.

I also plan most of my city visits that way, by saving the potentially interesting places I’m planning to visit after I’ve done the digging for what’s out there (here’s the list of travel resources I always use to plan my trips). Marking all the points on the map helps me plan the most efficient route through the city to see as many of them as possible in the time that I have. Since I prefer to walk everywhere, being efficient is pretty important and it is usually possible to find a circular route which passes all of my chosen points – then I always end up with random recommendations from locals along the way that completely mess up my system, but that’s the beauty of travelling, right? 🙂 I always save every accommodation or cafe I liked and all the recommendations as well, even if I didn’t manage to visit them, because the locals know best.

My personal list of interesting places

Over the years I’ve ended up with quite an extensive list of interesting places: great hostels and eateries, museums and monuments I liked and most importantly, the unusual places off the regular map that I’d come across during my travels. Since Google rolled out a new feature that enables saved places lists sharing, I am now sharing my personal list with you.

As of today there are over 1500 saved places on my list, but it will continue to grow as I travel, so make sure you follow it and save it for later. I hope this will help you out on your travels and shorten your travel planning a bit. And yes, it’s 100% free, you don’t have to opt-in to anything or give me your email to access it, although I do appreciate new subscribers and support if you like my work. Also, if you find it useful, feel free to share it with as many friends as you like!

Update as of 2023:

Because my single “Erratic points of interest” Google Maps list grew too long and got buggy, I have since split the list into separate lists for each country and you can find the links on the map below:

How does it work?

The majority of the saved places on these lists are places I’ve been to and liked, but there might be some in there that I’d marked for later and didn’t get the chance to visit yet. Obviously I didn’t include any places from countries I haven’t been to yet. You can also check my photo travel guides for more details about the destination you’re interested in, if I’ve already managed to cover it on my blog – I’ve tried to save all the places I mention in my blog posts. There will be more travel guides coming every week, so subscribe below this post if you want to stay updated. 🙂

When you click on one of the button links above you should be able to see my public Google Maps EE lists for each country. All my saved places should be marked on your world map and you can follow the list you are interested in to save it and keep it for later (I can’t see who’s following the list if your personal profile is not set to public). It will automatically get updated as I add new places. It also works offline, so the saved points will be still marked if you download the offline maps of the areas you want to go to. Word of advice though, it works better on mobile than on desktop, because there are still some glitches.

You can also create your own saved places lists and share them with others by sending them a link, so this new feature is actually quite useful. The lists can be either public or private, but be aware that you can’t share the default lists of Starred, Favourite or Want to go places, so you’ll need to create a new normal list. More on the lists feature here.

P. S.: Please let me know in the comments if anything doesn’t work for you and I’ll try to fix it if I can. The number of saved places shown tends to be a bit buggy and sometimes the saved places refuse to appear on the map, so I hope it will stabilise soon.