Google Sightseeing Awards 2010

Wednesday, 5th January 2011 by

As we wave farewell to another successful year of Google Sightseeing, let us cast our minds back to some of the best posts of 2010, all summarised neatly into some arbitrary made-up categories!

 

Most comprehensive sightseeing tour

We like to pretend a Google Sightseeing tour provides you with all you need to fully experience somewhere. To properly immerse yourself in this tour however, you really needed to read it whilst imbibing large quantities of single malt Scotch whisky.

Distilleries of Islay

Most utterly bizarre Street View sighting

Nearly a year later, and we still have absolutely no clue what to make of this. Just completely and utterly bizarre.

Crazy SCUBA Guys Chase Street View

Tongue-in-cheek article unintentionally causing most offence

If only we'd known that people could get so touchy about a little detail like which is the world's highest mountain!

Mount Everest Mount Everest no longer world’s highest mountain

Most architecturally interesting article

Despite some disagreement in the comments about exactly what kind of architecture Gaudi created, nobody denied his work's artistic merit.

Sagrada Família Gaudi’s Barcelona

Greatest unsolved conspiracy

How did he know where the Street View cameras would be? Why did Google censor him? How fast can he drive the Top Gear test track in a Lego car? All these questions were asked and almost none were answered.

Stig, Stig, wherefore art thou Stig?

Most epic journey

Such an epic journey in fact, that even the thought of it exhausts us. Fortunately, Ian took us on a step-by-step guide of the whole thing on Google Street View.

Pennine Way The Pennine Way

Most disgusting thing ever

Many readers had apparently never heard of people leaving behind thousands and thousands of bits of old, chewed, synthetic rubber stuck to a wall in the name of "art". Apparently those people were also blissfully happy in their ignorance.

The Gum Wall

Best previously poorly-visited sight revisited properly

The Hollywood Sign was one of the very first posts on Google Sightseeing, all the way back in April 2005. We didn't say that much back then, so it was about time Kevin did a proper investigation into the story of this most iconic of landmarks.

The Hollywood Sign

Best Street View tour inside a volcano

Wouldn't it be great if we'd had more than one tour on Street View inside a volcano? Well unfortunately we didn't, but if we had, this from our fifth annual Volcano Week would definitely have won.

Diamond Head

World's smallest "x" award

A geographically unquestionable article from Basement Geographer Kyle, which pinpointed the world's tiniest republic. (Before you ask, the Vatican doesn’t count as it’s a city-state and therefore its own capital).

Nauru: the world’s smallest republic

Best tour of places you'll never be allowed to go

A fascinating look inside some of the most top secret fake villages in the world! Yes, there are quite a few as it happens, but this is as close as you're ever likely to get.

Fake villages

Best tour of somewhere that isn't there anymore

OK, so there's some ruins there, but there isn't all that much to see really - however Noel did a great job of bringing these ancient relics to life.

The Ruins of the Aran Islands

People we'd least like to live next to

Of course we applaud their undiminishing dedication to their own personal causes, but honestly, would you want to live next door?

‘Creative’ Neighbours

Most terrifying top 3

Working in the aerospace industry, Chris knows his airports, and for this post he managed to find three runways which would clearly be absolutely terrifying to land on!

Top 3 Scariest Airports in the Caribbean

Best local's guide

What guest geographer Tom doesn’t know about Washington D.C. probably isn’t to do with Geography. What he does know however, is everything odd about it that is.

Oddities in Washington, DC

Most unbelievable story

Just as in 2009, our April Fools post was the most viewed article of the entire year. Which probably tells us we shouldn't bother trying to write factual articles, but we've decided to ignore the evidence and continue bringing you real sightseeing for 2011.

Secret feature lets users unblur Street View photos

Most of the time.