Its not too early to plan your holiday trips for the new year - in fact, you should do it now! If so, consider these ten destinations. We’ve gone through the Rrove Sets that we and our users have created to come up with these exciting recommendations.

Each Set is a map of tourist spots to visit. And while you might decide to go elsewhere, click through each Set to see these places. At the very least, you’ll enjoy awesome satellite views from Google.

1. Paris, France (map)

Dubbed the City of Light, Paris is the most visited city in the world. With its historical buildings and influence in the arts, Paris has a reputation of being one of the most beautiful and romantic places in the world. Enjoy the great selection of food and the sexy accents of its people.

Highlights: Visit the Eiffel Tower and a magnificent view of the city. Spend a day at Louvre museum and see the famous Mona Lisa. Stop by the Notre Dame Cathedral too and see the inspiration behind the tale.

 

Above: The Eiffel Tower & the Notre Dame Cathedral.

View the full list of sites in Paris

2. Rome, Italy (map)

When it comes to romance, Rome might take a back seat to Venice and its canals. But the Eternal City is known more for its history. This is the center of the great Roman empire: Julius Cesar, Augustus and Marc Anthony once ruled the land and brave gladiators fought in their coliseums. Today, the old structures still line the streets giving Rome the flavor of a by-gone era.

Highlights: The Colosseum stands proudly in the middle of the city. Start there and head west to Palatine Hill. You should also visit Vatican City to see St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.

 

Above: The Roman Colosseum & St. Peter’s Basilica

View the full list of sites in Rome

3. San Francisco, California (map)

San Francisco with its sprawling hills and laid-back dwellers is a great place to visit. You can go any time of with its year-long sunny weather. The city has a combination of modern art and culture, massive architecture and breath-taking views.

Highlights: Who doesn’t know the Golden Gate Bridge? Swing by hippie-street Haight-Asbury, shop at Union Square and drive down Lombard Street, the most crooked street in the world.

 

Above: The Golden Gate Bridge & Lombard Street

View the full list of sites in San Francisco

4. Las Vegas, Nevada (map)

Las Vegas is literally a theme park for adults! Even if you don’t enjoy gambling, the shows, rides and shopping can still entertain you for days. Walking the strip is 100% fun – you can watch the fountains of the Bellagio, ride to the top of the baby Eiffel Tower or watch pirates at Treasure Island. Bring your camera!

Highlights: The Luxor hotel and its pyramid design, the Venetian and its canals and the Excalibur hotel and its medieval castle and towers.

 

Above: The Luxor & Excalibur Hotels

View a full list of sites in Las Vegas

5. Madrid, Spain (map)

Travel to Spain, the land of laid-back and relaxation. Enjoy the capital city through its great food, cultural and artistic heritage and lively nightlife. Marvel at the monolithic cathedrals and churches as well as the medieval architecture. Be careful of the middle of day, however, as it can be extremely hot (hence, the siestas the Madrilenos take).

Highlights: Experience Spain’s monarchial heritage with the Royal Palace. Visit the National Museum and learn more about the city’s history.

 

Above: The Royal Palace & National Museum

View a full list of sites of Madrid

6. New York, New York (map)

Everyone knows New York, the Big Apple. Visitors are greeted by the Statue of Liberty and travel to Times Square. The financial capital of the United States (and arguably the entire world), this city is also known for modern culture through its Broadway shows and the like.

Highlights: Lady Liberty, Times Square, Wall Street and Grand Central Station can be done within one day. Be careful of traffic though - its quite packed.

 

Above: The Statue of Liberty & the Grand Central Station

View a full list of sites in New York

7. Seoul, South Korea (map)

Seoul is the largest city in South Korea and is the political, economic and culture hub of the country. This very modern city is best for shopping and modern entertainment. After visiting the malls and theme parks, you can opt to view the five or so palaces to experience some of the country’s history.

Highlights: Lotte World is a Korean version of Disneyland. The World Cup Stadium was built for the world’s most prestigious football competition.

 

Above: Lotte World & the World Cup Stadium

View a full list of sites in Seoul

8. Beijing, China (map)

Beijing and its low-cost economic labor is set to take over the world’s production. While the city is experiencing neck-breaking prosperity and developing to a modern epicenter, Beijing still has a thousand-year history to experience. See the country’s long cultural past and oriental architecture with its temples, palaces and museums.

Highlights: the Forbidden City is the where the Emperor ruled for centuries, the Great Wall protected the Chinese from its northern Mongolian invaders, and Tiananmen Square is the location of the famous 80s demonstration.

 

Above: The Forbidden City & Tiananmen Square

View a full list of sites in Beijing

9. London, United Kingdom (map)

While London is known for its dark and gloomy days, the city has a lot to offer. One of the largest European cities, London is a global capital of politics, culture, fashion, trade and finance. While the Queen and the English monarchy (and the soldiers with the long, tall hats) are required experiences, don’t forget that London also host architectural marvels and interesting museums.

Highlights: Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives, and Big Ben, the clock inside Westminster’s Palace, are the best known spots in London.

 

Above: The Buckingham Palace & Big Ben

View a full list of sites in London

10. Los Angeles, California (map)

Welcome to Los Angeles, the land of Hollywood and big screen stars. Travel down the Walk of Stars and Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills. After the glitz, get a thrill through theme-park fun. Or lie around the sunny beaches and enjoy the beautiful people doing the same.

Highlights: Mann’s Chinese Theater sits on the Walk of Stars while the Hollywood sign overlooks it. Don’t forget to spend a day at Universal Studios.

 

Above: Universal Studios & the Hollywood sign

View a full list of sites in Los Angeles

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We’re proud to have mashed-up another great service - EVDB/Eventful. For those who are unfamiliar, EVDB allows you to list and promote your activity through their database. You might have realized that Eventful pulls info out from EVDB. You might not realize that other services such as Podbop use EVDB too. They’ve got a good vision - they’re focusing on building a comprehensive list of events that they can provide to other services. These services can then slice and dice then whatever they want.

So, you can see our EVDB/Eventful hook-up on our ‘Details’ page. Here are some examples:

Bill Gates’s House
Buca de Beppo, San Francisco

You’ll see a list of events at the bottom. What does this do for you? Well, if you’re considering a location like a restaurant, you might want to check out the activities happening around it. This especially works well if you’re doing a date. It works better in San Francisco too - traffic is just a killer.

Anyways, our deepest gratitude to Chris Radcliffe of EVBD (thanks buddy!). He’s given us the sound-off on a new API that pulled out the best events. But I’ll leave that for them to announce. Ask them for details!

Btw - if you want to find add your events to a Rrove, you have to add it via EVDB. And feedback is always welcome!

So, in the last couple of days, Atom added v.2 of Rrove pictures. Before, you had to go to Flickr and add our tags to your pictures. Now, you can add your photos through Rrove itself. Simply visit the ‘Details’ page of a location and click ‘Tag this picture.’ Rrove will automatically access Flickr and show you your pictures (of course, you need a Flickr account). You can then select the photos you want to associate with that location and Rrove will automatically add them to the page (we add our tags to your picture).

Here’s an example. Add your pictures to it by logging in, and please remove them after (as they probably won’t have anything to do with the location). Better yet, add a favorite location and add your pictures to it.

In a way, this new feature allows Rrove to do geoblogging. This is essentially adding pictures to locations. There used to be a community around www.geobloggers.com but that has closed down - the creator has joined Flickr (congratulations!). So if there are any geobloggers out there - Rrove might be a good option. Email me at davester@rrove.com for comments and feature requests. I’d really love to hear the thoughts of the geoblogging community on what we’re doing.

So, I play a very unique sport called underwater hockey. Its a game that played at the bottom of the pool with snorkeling gear, a small stick, and heavy lead puck. While you may think its funny, but you should really see the pictures first.

One of the reasons why I found myself in the SF Bay Area is because of Club Puck. Its the strongest underwater hockey club in the United States, with half of the members making up the US National Team (yes, we have underwater hockey Olympics - its called The Worlds Championships). I wanted to train with these guys - superstars in our own little worldwide community.

While Club Puck plays at a high-level, we welcome newbies. To help in our recruitment efforts, I figured that creating a Rrove page of where we play and adding some trimmings (essentially some pictures and club information) should help. The ‘Details’ page can be saved into the members’ personal accounts. Since the ‘Details’ page is permanent, it can easily be sent out through the ‘Email Friend’ function to a new player. For the newbie, it’ll act as a poster of sorts, and it does have a way to get driving directions to our pool.

Here’s a screen shot:

See the real Rrove page here.

I hope that gives you some ideas on how Rrove can be used. And yes, we do welcome new players. We play on T/Th/S at San Jose State University. Get on the mailing list and introduce yourself. You know where the details are located.

In the last week, we’ve enabled pictures to come out in the ‘Details’ page. To show you what it can do, Atom and I created some samples. Last Christmas, my girlfriend and I went to Disneyland. As with all my locations, I saved this into Rrove. Here is the ‘Details’ page with pictures from Mickey’s wonderland. (if you’re really observant, you’d notice that some of these pictures are really from Las Vegas; yeah, we went there too.)

Another example is Surf Day at 41st in Santa Cruz, CA. Some friends of mine decided to get-together to ride some waves (in vain). Here’s the surf spot with some of our pictures.

We hope you like them. Interested? Its pretty simple to add pictures. Here’s how:

1) Copy the geotags on the ‘Details’ page. For the these two examples, its ‘geotagged geo:lat=33.812521 geo:lon=-117.926423′ and ‘geotagged geo:lat=36.960900 geo:lon=-121.964900′; respectively.

2) Go to your Flickr and add your pictures. Add the tags.

Of course, this assumes that you have a Flickr account. If you don’t, sign-up now!

Eventually, we will make this process simpler. Between the two of us, we’re really swamped with Rrove and some other commitments. But it will come.

(Oh, if you want to help - shoot me an email at davester -at- Rrove -dot- com.)