Monday, July 31, 2023

Visit Barcelona Without Going Abroad

Earlier this year Axios created 50 travel itineraries which allow Americans to travel the world without ever leaving their home state. In Visit Paris Without Leaving Home you can enter the name of any state and retrieve an interactive map which shows an optimal route around the towns and cities in your state which share a name with a foreign location.

Of course if you are French then you really don't have to leave the country to visit Paris. You also don't need to leave France to visit Barcelona, Milan, Venice, Dallas or Rome - because towns with these names can all be found within the borders of France.

Le Monde has mapped out the locations of 35,000 French municipalities which share a name with a foreign town or city. Using the interactive map in Go On Vacation Abroad Without Leaving France you can plan optimal journeys around France visiting all the locations with place-names which correspond to places abroad. 

The markers on this map can be filtered by individual countries. So, for example, if you want to visit Verona, Venice, Milan and Rome you just need to select the 'Italy' option. If you also want to visit Boston and Dallas then you just need to check the 'USA' as well. 

It must be noted that in order to establish a list of 35,000 towns with foreign names Le Monde has stretched the definition of 'homophone' a little. For example the French town of Domblain (Haute-Marne) is said to be a homophone of Dublin and Fontcouverte (Aude) is said to sound the same as Vancouver.

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