Virtually a holiday

It's the summer holidays again, and time for the annual British migration south, east and west. But this is 2009. We already watch television on the iPlayer, make new friends on Facebook, "work from home" over the internet. So the next logical step— bypass the hell of Heathrow and reduce your carbon footprint in one fell swoop by taking your holidays online too.

Google's Street View, which merges photographs taken of streets in cities across the globe to produce a close likeness of the world in 3D, sparked off heated debates about privacy when launched in March. But as a "holiday" provider it's matchless: go to Google Maps, zoom in, pick up a little orange avatar man and you can have London, New York, Paris, Rome or even Scunthorpe at your fingertips—all for the price of a broadband connection.

Literalists will argue that it's not the same as going on a real holiday, and it isn't. Sure, you can traipse over Florence's Pontevecchio. (Streetview is so sharp that you can even go window-shopping in the little jewellery shops along the bridge.) But you can't feel the Tuscan sun on your skin.



Yet there are plenty of things that you couldn't do in real life—like blaze through the cutthroat traffic of a Neapolitan autostrada. (How long before Google teams up with Grand Theft Auto so that you can go whizzing about in stolen Alfa Romeos?) You can visit the dodgier Parisian banlieues—the ones you read about during the riots of autumn 2005 but your bleeding heart is not quite sturdy enough to inspect. Or how about a tour of LA on foot, the city with barely a sidewalk? A friend took a leisurely Street View stroll all the way from the Hollywood Hills to Echo Park via the Walk of Fame. She gave up on the trek to Venice Beach when she got tired (wrists). After a snooze in her London bed, she revved up her MacBook engines and walked the Laurel Canyon to Jim Morrison's 1960s rock'n'roll hangout, where she stood on the porch to see views he would have seen. All this without the notorious LA smog or running out of petrol once.

The sportif can follow the route of the 2008 Tour de France and kids can visit the Paris Disneyland. And if you still yearn for some unspoilt piece of land, try the ultimate holiday: Google Moon, complete with maps of the Apollo landings and on-site photography to give you a feel for the atmosphere—or lack of it.

After a few days of Google travel, with your wallet intact and your cultural vistas expanded, you may wish to go and thank your new travel agents. And you can. There in Mountain View, California, are the Googleplex offices, with the staff standing outside waving. Go have a look. It's a far prettier sight than the Ryanair check-in girl.