Last week, my wife and I took a vacation to New Orleans and it was the first time we used Foursquare to plan a trip. I asked friends for suggestions, looked at other Foursquare lists, and did some online research to create my list of 25 places that I wanted to visit while there. These places ranged from tourist magnets such as Bourbon Street and Cafe Du Monde to the more local places like Cafe Envie and Port of Call. Our typical approach in New Orleans was to go to a neighborhood we wanted to explore and then visit the places that were nearby on our Foursquare lists. Out of the 25 places I had on my list, I ended up visiting 16 which is a bit low but I made up for that by visiting a bunch of local places that I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.

Before I had a smartphone, I remember drawing a map every time I went somewhere new so I wouldn’t get lost. I’m no longer doing that but still need to come up with a rough plan of when to visit the various places. The next step would be something that takes my list and applies a route finding algorithm to come up with an agenda that gets me to visit all the places while taking into account distance, open hours, and the venue type. Combine this with Google Glass and you get a pretty awesome way of exploring a new city. I’m excited.