Around the world with Google Earth

The Eiffel Tower. Mount Rushmore. The Great Wall of China. The Seattle Space Needle. The pyramids of Egypt. The beaches of Boracay. Well, these are just of the places I’ve read and dreamed of visiting someday. I don’t know if I would be able to visit all them in my lifetime, though. But thanks to Google Earth I can visit them whenever I want at the comfort of my desk.

Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips. So without leaving your desk, you can actually get a view of Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty. Or perhaps you want to show to your friends in Manila where your apartment in New York is. Just type in the address and they get a satellite image of your abode. Going to Quebec next week? Just type in Quebec, Canada and you will an aerial view of the city. You can even see how far is your hotel from the conference venue, restaurants or shopping malls near you. You can also view exotic locations such as Bali, Chiangmai or Jeju Island. Even Stonehenge is very clear.

Take note though, that the images are not real time. Photographs were taken in the last three years. And some areas have very high resolution you could actually the cars on the street. I “went” to Washington DC the other day to see how far I walked to see the museums and memorial shrines when I was there in September of 2004. I know my friend and I walked several blocks. We saw then the White House (of course), the Washington Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool. An added bonus was seeing the word PHILIPPINES in one of the columns in the World War II Memorial. Well, I when I “got back to DC” last week, the World War II Memorial was just being constructed. So that image was probably before 2004. They do rotate the satellite images. Laguna de Bay is clear blue the first time I saw it. Now the image has been replaced, the waters are dark and only a small portion has the blue water color. Now I don’t know if it is because of image quality or because of water pollution.

I stayed in Ft. Collins, Colorado for two months last year. So that my parents could imagine the place where I was (they do tend to worry), I showed them the satellite images of Colorado State University and the downtown Ft. Collins – my apartment, the lab, the student center where I eat my lunch, the church I go to even the groceries where I shopped.

More Great Wall in the US

So what are the places I’ve been to? I have “visited” Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, Machu Picchu in Peru, the Space Needle in Seattle, the Taj Mahal, St Peter’s Basilica and the Coliseum in Rome, the Tower of London, the Forbidden City among others. There is one place that continues to elude me though. The Great Wall of China! Whenever I type in “Great Wall of China”, dozens of restaurants with the name “Great Wall of China” come up. It seems that there more “Great Wall of China in the US than in China itself. Well oh well, I might just have to visit the Great Wall of China in person sometime in the future.

Other links:

Travel to the World

How to Write and Sell Your own E-book in 7 days