WHAT ARE MAPS OF FUN?
“Plans should be ephemeral, so be prepared to move away from them.” - Anthony Bourdain
Maps of Fun are customized maps that contain a curated selection of destinations (such as restaurants, shops, and places of interest) within a given city or town. They’re meant to allow for flexibility while traveling, because plans are wonderful except when they might not make sense anymore and a Plan B (or Plan C or Plan D) could be a better alternative.
Maps of Fun started, in part, as a way for me and my husband to enjoy day trips into New York City when he was a grad student at Yale. Michael hated not having a plan of what we were going to do in the city when we arrived, so I would come up with an itinerary, complete with printed Google maps taped into a Moleskine notebook alongside various notes like directions and train schedules. (Ah, the time before smartphones.) Eventually, that evolved into creating custom Google Maps for those day trips and subsequently for all of our travels, as they became a visual culmination of all of the research I had done in the months leading up to our trips. Creatiing these maps gives me a way to immerse myself in a destination before I get there, so that when I finally arrive I feel ready to dive right into exploring.
Over the years, friends have approached me asking for advice on places they know I love and know well, and I’ve always been happy to respond with a list of suggestions. It dawned on me recently that this could be a packaged service, and thus, this website was born.