Schmap World for Windows

Take virtual tours in 200 worldwide destinations

I'm always looking for good reference points to know what to do and see in a city, and the internet is a great resource, but often the information is not well organized and you will have to look at many different sites to have a better idea of a town or place.

Schmap helps you because is like an intelligent database, with a lot of useful, interesting touristic information, but it's not designed just for tourists, because people can discover a lot about their city of residence as well.

I really liked the tour function. The program creates a visual tour on the town's map based on your interests. It shows you the interesting places with a brief description, a photo and then it moves to the next highlight by moving the map, so that you can see how far the places are between each other.

What I've found annoying for such big piece of software is the lack of a powerful navigation menu, so to allow you to jump from the map mode to the descriptions where you have all the information about a city. There are also some stability issues; The program frequently crashed, for example while downloading new photos or while simply using it.

Schmap is a very powerful tool to organize a travel itinerary or simply to know more about your own city. It is a great guide also to activities you can do nearby a town and the thematic virtual tours will help you get the most in the shortest time. Be prepared to deal with a poor navigation system and some stability issues though.