Turning a Google Maps list of pins into an ordered day-by-day plan

Saving restaurants, sights and stays to a Google Maps list is a fast way to collect ideas while scrolling, and a custom map built in My Maps is a clear way to see where everything sits relative to everything else.

HawaiiiPhoto: E bailey · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

HawaiiiPhoto: Frank Schulenburg · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

What a saved list does not do on its own is decide which pin belongs on which day, or how many pins reasonably fit into one day without the day running long. HolidayWow reads one sentence about the trip, such as a week in Hawaii with the kids in spring break, and returns the days already ordered rather than a map still waiting to be organised.

On the map inside HolidayWow, every stop becomes a pin on its own day, with the travel time to the next stop shown on the line between them, and a pace, relaxed (1 to 2 stops a day), balanced (2 to 3 stops) or packed (3 to 5 stops), controlling how full each day looks.

Any stop already saved elsewhere can be typed into the sentence that builds the plan, and the planner places it on a day with the right travel time rather than leaving it as an unordered pin. Dates are optional at this stage: the plan works from a month alone, and adding exact dates later fills in the weekday, live weather and live prices on each day card.

Perth in January sits around 27°C by day and 20°C overnight, with 12 hours of sun and 2 rain days, long bright days well suited to a packed pace of 3 to 5 stops with time left over for a beach stop most afternoons.

PerthiPhoto: Calistemon · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

PerthiPhoto: Alexey V. Kurochkin · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

A sentence naming Perth and January is enough to place the river, the coast and the hills across separate days, each with its own travel time, rather than a scattered list of pins still needing an order.

With around 20 days of annual leave typical across Australia, the Long Weekend planner reads official public holiday dates and shows how a long weekend can stretch into a longer trip, a step a saved list of pins has no way to factor in on its own.

Because school holidays run on different weeks by state, naming the exact break in the sentence builds the plan around those dates directly, rather than a generic month guessed from a calendar.