Street View is Taking me Home

I grew up in Holland, and one of my favorite cities in the world is still Amsterdam. It’s no surprise that I’m very excited about Google Maps having expanded Street View for cities in Holland. They include Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and several other cities. I’m a bit dissapointed Utrecht and Scheveningen were not yet included, but I’m sure in time I can take a virtual trip back home to my favorite spots there as well.

It is funny that the original post on the Google LatLong Blog was also written by a person who used to live in Holland. When I went to use Street View, not only was I impressed with how extensively every nook and cranny of Amsterdam was covered, I also managed to find the area where I used to live:

Street view has previously helped solve crimes, like I wrote about earlier on Google Tutor, it definitely can help you plan a trip as well. How many times have you arrived at a location just to think it really wasn’t that worth the trouble? If you air on the side of caution instead of adventure, you can use street view to see if a location is truly all it is cracked up to be.

I couldn’t help but notice that, even though resolution is not good enough for an identification, the Street View pictures inevitably having pictures of people in them. Google Tutor has previously covered the issue of having your home appear in Street View, but privacy issues are very real as well.

The Dutch are pretty easy-going on this, unlike the British, so I don’t expect this to slow down the Street View level mapping of the rest of the country. So far, I am quite impressed with the coverage of street view:

At least for Amsterdam… the blue areas denote street view coverage for that area. For the rest of Holland, the picture looks like there is quite a bit left to go for Google.

I’m really going to be excited when I can virtually keep tabs on what has changed in my childhood neighborhood, and when I can see whether my childhood home is still in the same place, with the same red bush in front of it. Hopefully, we will not have to wait too long to travel to our childhood memories – and kill homesickness – with Google Maps.

Where will you take a virtual trip (down memory lane?) to?