I really love to travel; but because it takes so long to get to and from international destinations, I like to try to be as efficient as possible so that my time at the target location is spent with as little hassle as possible. Maybe I'll write about my dream travel kit in some other forum sometime, but the times that I've spent the airtime orienting myself have resulted in the best trips.
We all email friends before we go somewhere new to ask for cool locations, tips on where to stay, and so on. We also probably buy guidebooks and check websites. Something I used to do obsessively was buy a city map and study it, getting to know the major arteries, the landmarks and their layouts. That's not just because I have a pretty crappy sense of direction; it's because the minute I land, I like to have a sense of the lie of the land and my place in it. Orientation, perhaps more than anything else, makes me feel the beginning of a connection with a new city.
I was talking with Chris Buffa the other day about traveling. He mentioned that he went to Tokyo for the first time last year, but it felt familiar because he had played Project Gotham Racing. It wasn't perfect, but he could recognize Shinjuku and get a feel for how the city was laid out.
What a fucking brilliant idea. A great tool to orient: the Tourist Game. It could be, say, co-produced by the Let's Go series. It wouldn't need to be ultra-detailed, just hit the main landmarks and transportation arteries. You could have special Scenic Road edition which would be long, leisurely cruises down the California coast or along the Norwegian fjords. I would totally buy that expansion pack.