Most driveways around the world are reserved for parking the family car, but 58 year old ex-coal miner Francois Zanella uses his driveway to park his personal home-made cruise ship.

The ship is a 1/8th reproduction of the Royal Caribbean International cruise-liner, Majesty of the Seas. Mr. Zanella spent 11 years constructing it, by hand, in his hometown of Morsbach, Moselle, France. With sponsorship from various local companies he built the hull, installed two 100 hp engines, decorated the 160m² internal living space and eventually launched the vessel on 23 June 2005.

At 33.5m long, 4.75m wide and 90 tons the mini-Majesty of the Seas is a fully functional canal boat and is now driven around the canals of Europe. This photo of Mr. Zanella gives a good idea of the ship’s scale.

The real Majesty of the Seas is also available on Google Earth, seen here docked in the Port of Miami. However, this version certainly won’t fit in the canals of Europe – it weighs 73,941 gross tons and accommodates up to 2,744 passengers whilst cruising around Nassau, Coco Cay and Key West.

The whole story of Francois’ model, and Wikipedia for Majesty of the Seas and Majesty of the Seas (mini).

Thanks: Mathieu Mangeot & Aurelien_F & OGO50

Today is Groundhog Day, a North American festival which reckons that:

if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks.

So in celebration, we’re posting Woodstock, Illinois, the location where most of the scenes from the excellent Bill Murray comedy of the same name were filmed (although it was actually set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania). And yes, in our thumbnail of the town square you can actually see “Gobbler’s Knob”…

For fans of the movie, the official Woodstock website has a PDF map which identifies all the locations used.

Thanks to Nev, Arthur and Pat.

Today is Groundhog Day, a North American festival which reckons that:

if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks.

So in celebration, we’re posting Woodstock, Illinois, the location where most of the scenes from the excellent Bill Murray comedy of the same name were filmed (although it was actually set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania). And yes, in our thumbnail of the town square you can actually see “Gobbler’s Knob”…

For fans of the movie, the official Woodstock website has a PDF map which identifies all the locations used.

Thanks to Nev, Arthur and Pat.

Today we’re celebrating, as this post right here is the one thousandth post on Google Sightseeing!

We’re commemorating the event in three ways…

1. We’re re-launching our Google Earth Network Link, which has been less than functional for a few months now. Along with a re-development of the underlying system we’ve added custom placemark icons and a secondary feed which features only the most recent entries, so you can always see what’s new on Google Sightseeing from within Google Earth.

You can sign up to the Network Links on our brand new Tools page.

2. We’re launching a new blog! Rotacoo is the parent company of Google Sightseeing and the new Rotacoo blog is where Alex and I will be posting news, ideas and rants related to anything we like including Google Sightseeing, Google Earth, Wordpress, Web programming, design and the price of cheese.

3. Stats! To start off the Rotacoo blog we’ve looked at the Google Sightseeing stats for the last two years and added up all the numbers. Read the whole entry over at Rotacoo.