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I've toyed with hiring a local to wear a GoPro and walk the halls of the Louvre and one or two major cities, streaming the video to me in real time. I'd direct him or her so I could see the sights without the hell of travel. It's not on the list that I can find so I guess that it must not be allowed. ;-)


Amazon had something similar around 2021 called "Amazon Explore" for $10-$99, where a local tour guide would lead a small group. You could also buy souvenirs and have them mailed back to you. They seem to have discontinued it though.


Looked it up and, yes, that's pretty much what I had in mind. Maybe it will come back!


Isn't this what Periscope used to be before Twitter acquisition. I saw Louvre this way back in 2016.


Judging by the tourists around here, you can't claim to have been somewhere unless you have a selfie that shows you standing in front of [$FAMOUS_MONUMENT]. That selfie is much more important than actually inspecting the thing.

They'll take these selfies in front of any damn building - a brick-clad concrete lawyer's office built in the 90s, even a souvenir shop-window. If you're determined to be a tourist, at least look.


I last traveled ~2004, well before selfies and social media. Wasn't great then and I can only guess how much worse it has gotten.


I bet there’s something close to you that you could actually see in real life that you’ve never seen before.


There must be literally a million videos on YouTube of exactly this.


I've watched a lot of those but I was thinking of something interactive like the Amazon Explore product mentioned above.

For many years the Rhaetian Railways/Canton of Graubunden in Switzerland had high quality helmet-cam videos of a 30+ hour walk from Thusis to Tirano with many stops along the way. These were part of a beautifully done Flash website where one could "walk along" in real time. Unfortunately, when Flash went away so did the site. I wrote to them several times pleading for them to preserve it or at least make the videos available. They finally replied and said no, there was no interest let alone budget.

Wayback has the landing pages but not the videos which were served from elsewhere.

https://web.archive.org/web/20140704073418/http://www.webwan...


When my grandfather gave up his caravan he discovered he could explore places with Google Street View instead




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