It’s that time of year again when the team at Google Sightseeing take a well deserved bit of time off!

For the next two weeks we only have a couple of posts planned, but we may still update our twitter feed from time-to-time. We’ll be back to our regular schedule in early January.

Thanks to everyone who has submitted sights, linked to us, written about us, and most importantly, read the site this year!

We would say “happy holidays”, except that would be unfair on people who have to work this festive season, so we’re sticking to the traditional Merry Christmas!

Well we’ve thought we’ve seen people relieving themselves in front of the Street View car before, but we’ve never had such definitive evidence.

No, it’s not what you’re thinking - quite the opposite in fact. This time, while working in Madrid, the Google car has captured an image of a woman taking a pee in the street.

Anyone want to take bets on how quickly this will be removed? And will El País pick up the story before then!?

Update: As expected, the image is now gone.

Despite Google’s oh-so-clever “face-blurring” technology, sometimes people’s faces don’t get recognised by the system, and make it onto the Street View imagery unaltered.

Here at the Colosseum in Rome, a couple found a perfect way to fool the camera… by engaging in a steamily passionate kiss!

This kiss was so passionate in fact, that someone at Google appears to have been charged with manually pixellating the offending image - presumably to save us the embarrassment of having to see a couple kissing.

Like no-one’s ever seen that on the Internet before…

What is interesting though, is that they bothered to pixellate the image themselves, rather than (as we’ve seen many times before) just remove the image completely. Presumably this is thanks to the fact that the Colosseum is one of Italy’s most famous tourist destinations.

The moral of the story? If you want to be seen on Google Street View doing something outrageous, make sure you’re in front of a hugely recognisable landmark.

We all know that Santa lives at the North Pole, and the World’s Largest Santa can be found there too… that is, in the city of North Pole, Alaska.

This 12m tall Santa can be found on St Nicholas Drive, outside Santa Claus House. He’s less visible from above, so we’re thankful that the Street View car visited (perhaps to drop off a Christmas wish list … freedom from privacy laws, cheap gas … ?)

While actually 2700km south of the real North Pole, the city takes full advantage of its name, with other streets bearing seasonal titles such as Snowman Lane and Kris Kringle Drive. The streetlights on Santa Claus Lane are made up like candy canes, and the emergency vehicles are painted in Christmas colours.

Thanks to Brandon.

The Singapore Flyer is a 150 metre-tall observation wheel located on Marina Bay, overlooking Singapore’s city centre - and for the moment, it holds the title of the world’s largest observation wheel.

The next tallest observation wheel is the Star of Nanchang (sadly not-yet-built in Google Earth¹, but here’s a ground-level photo), which was the world’s tallest from when it was built in 2006, right up until the opening of the Singapore Flyer in February 2008. This is odd, because at 160 metres the Star of Nanchang should never have lost the title!²

It transpires that the Singapore Flyer has been built on top of a three-story building, taking it to a total height of 165 metres and into the record books. What a con!

Observation wheels seem to be de rigueur these days³ - just last weekend Melbourne got in on the act with the 120 m Southern Star, which we can see under construction on Australian Street View.

Elsewhere, Germany is busy building the Great Berlin Wheel (location), which at a planned 175 m would take the title from the Singapore Flyer.

Unless of course China gets there first, as the Beijing Great Wheel (location) is due to be completed first, and will rise to a staggering 208 metres.

All of which is great news for the Great Wheel Corporation, who will then be the owners of all three of the tallest observation wheels in the world.

There’s lots more at Wikipedia about the Singapore Flyer, the Star of Nanchang, the Southern Star, the Great Berlin Wheel, and the Beijing Great Wheel.

Thanks to John Andresen and Glenn Baker.