Google map and Panoramio

I was in China during this summer. Besides having fun with Olympics, me and my friends was planning a two weeks trip to south west China, an area full of nature attractions. It is a huge mountain area, bigger than Texas. The reason why it has so many beautiful places is that the terrain of this area changes a lot, from Tibet Plateau to ground level, which makes those attractions so different and so far away from each other. We need to first finalize two or three places among so many "five star" rating places of interest in travel guide books, places that we all like, and then start detail research on how to travel in those places. We found that google map or google earth is really helpful in making the decisions because of the photos posted by Panoramio placed in the exact location where they are being taken on the map. There are many photos to check out when zooming in. They are all shot and uploaded by tourists, not like those "perfect" pictures provided by tour company. So we can easily compare between different attractions to see which type of seeing we all like, where has more interesting things and how far they are from each other. We also found some beautiful places that are not on the books by looking photos. As a result, our trip was really wonderful.