About this tool
The city pins map
The city pins map is for when marking whole countries isn't enough. You've been to Japan six times — but which cities? You road-tripped Europe — where exactly did you sleep? This tool is the answer: a pin on a world map, labeled with the city name, for every place that mattered.
What is it?
An interactive world map where you click to drop a labeled pin at any location. When you click, we call BigDataCloud's free client-side reverse-geocoding API to suggest the nearest city or town, and pre-fill a prompt with that suggestion. Hit enter and the pin is saved with a permanent cream label floating above it. No account, no API key, no server — the pins live in your browser's local storage under the key mtm_pins.
Pin labels are always visible (not just on hover) so you can see the whole story of your travels at a glance — or screenshot the map without having to first hover every pin.
Who is it for?
- Travelers who want city-level detail — not just countries — because one trip to Italy includes Rome, Florence, and Cinque Terre, and they each deserve a mark.
- People who visit the same country repeatedly and want to track which regions or cities they've explored versus which ones they still haven't.
- Couples and families building a shared trip journal on a single screen.
- Travelers to obscure places — tiny islands, mountain towns, remote national parks — that don't show up as separate entries on a country-level map.
- People marking memorable moments rather than just places: where you proposed, where you met a partner, where your kid took their first steps.
How to use it
- Click anywhere on the map to start adding a pin. A prompt opens with the suggested city name pre-filled.
- Edit the label before hitting Enter if the suggestion isn't quite right. You can use any text — place name, trip number, a memory.
- Click an existing pin to rename it. Clear the text and hit OK to delete it instead (you'll get a confirm).
- Clear all pins with the red button in the top-right corner. It wipes everything after a confirmation.
Use cases
- City-level travel journal — the primary use case. One pin per city you've slept in.
- Memorable moment map — pin the places where life happened, not just where you were.
- Hobbyist tracker — surf breaks, ski resorts, dive sites, climbing crags, hiking trailheads.
- Ancestry travel — marking every village or town where your ancestors came from.
- Year-in-review visual — at the end of the year, screenshot the pins you added in the last 12 months.
Five examples of real use
1. The weekend city-breaker
Someone who flies to a different European city every other weekend uses the pin map to track every city they've spent a night in. Twenty-eight pins in a year, all visible at once — a picture of a lifestyle.
2. The foodie's pilgrimage
A travel-food writer pins every Michelin-star restaurant they've eaten at. The map becomes a visual CV for their next article pitch.
3. The surfer's break log
A surfer pins every break they've surfed, from Lombok in Indonesia to the Oregon coast. They rename each pin with the break name instead of the nearest town.
4. The ancestry tourist
Someone tracing their Italian roots uses the map to pin every village their great-grandparents lived in, turning a family tree into something they can see.
5. The concert-goer's tour map
A music fan pins every city where they've seen their favorite band play live, renaming each pin with the year and venue. It becomes a personal timeline of fandom.