Who needs maps?

After spending a few hours at the office earlier today, I decided to tour a bit around Washington, DC.  I had picked up a map for both the mall area and the metro system before I left the hotel, so I was prepared to navigate.

As I was getting off the train at Metro Center though, I realized that the maps were pretty pointless, because I have Google Maps on my Blackberry with GPS.  I fired it up, and turned on GPS.  As I was walking past buildings on my way to the office, and then to the National Mall, I watched on Google Maps and knew what each building was.  So much nicer than the static map (which did not label each building).  When I was walking by the IRS building I zoomed in on satellite view and saw that the building, which looks to be a huge solid structure on the outside, actually has a few courtyards in the middle (one even has a tree).  I would have never known that if not for Google Maps.

I am sure things like this are not as impressive to the younger generation, but to old guys like me who don’t remember to do things like this regularly it is quite eye opening.  A totally different way to navigate and sightsee.