Catalog
Danny Boyle's The Beach (2000) follows a young backpacker from Bangkok's Khao San Road to a secret island beach, shot at Maya Bay on Ko Phi Phi Le, from Alex Garland's 1996 novel. The route runs from Khao San Road through Ko Samui, a Khao Yai waterfall and Maya Bay to Ko Pha Ngan. Several stops are stand-ins: hotel interiors were shot in Phuket, the waterfall jump in Khao Yai, and the island itself is invented.
Fargo (1996) is set in Fargo, Brainerd and Moose Lake but was mostly filmed around Minneapolis, from a Richfield dealership and downtown garages to a Square Lake cabin. The route follows the botched kidnapping from the bar deal to the final arrest, pairing each story place with the site where the Coen brothers shot it; several are demolished or relocated. It ends in Fargo itself, where the wood chipper prop is on show.
Scream's Woodsboro is a fictional California town, but the 1996 film was shot in Glen Ellen, Santa Rosa, Healdsburg, Sonoma and Tomales. This route follows eight of those places in story order, from Casey Becker's house and Sidney Prescott's bedroom to the school, the town square, the video store and the Tomales house where the killers are unmasked. Several stops are private houses, so see them from the street; the square and the community center are the public ones.
In 1805 the frigate HMS Surprise is hammered by a French privateer off Brazil, and her captain will not go home. The chase runs south round Cape Horn to the Galápagos, with a ship's surgeon who only wants to look at birds. The route follows the film's voyage, then the places where it was actually made: a giant tank in Mexico and the replica ship in San Diego. It covers the 2003 film, not Patrick O'Brian's novels, and the sea stops are left unpinned.
A boy born in Eisleben becomes a monk, a professor and the man who defied an emperor. Along the way he vows in a thunderstorm, challenges the church over indulgences, is spirited away in disguise and ends his life where it began. The route follows Luther through seven places in Germany: his birth house, the Erfurt monastery, the Wittenberg church doors, the Diet of Worms, the Wartburg, his Wittenberg home and the house where he died. The Worms pin is approximate, and the Castle Church doors story is tradition.
In 2035 Artyom leaves the Moscow Metro on a stolen train, the Aurora, and finds that Russia beyond the city is still alive. The sequel to Metro 2033 turns a Moscow underground story into a rail journey across the whole country. The route follows the Volga, the Ark at Yamantau, the Caspian and Novosibirsk to Lake Baikal. The game's places are invented versions of real ones, so every pin is an area, not a level.
In the spring of 2004 Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman set out from London on motorcycles, heading east for New York with cinematographer Claudio von Planta. The ride ran from 14 April to 29 July and crossed twelve countries and 18,887 miles. The route follows the highlights: a church built of bones in the Czech Republic, a UNICEF project in Mongolia, the mud of the Zilov Gap, the Road of Bones to Magadan, Mount Rushmore and the ride into New York. Pins mark places and areas; the real line of travel ran between them.
On 6 August 1945 an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; three days later, another on Nagasaki. This route follows the two days on the ground, from the bridge that served as the aiming point to the places that survived or were rebuilt. It starts in Hiroshima at Aioi Bridge, the hypocenter and the Dome, then moves to Nagasaki's hypocenter, cathedral and shrine, and ends with the two museums and parks built in 1955. Death tolls are estimates and are given as the ranges researchers publish.
Andrei Tarkovsky's Zone, a fenced-off wilderness where a guide takes a writer and a professor toward a Room said to grant wishes, was largely shot around Tallinn, Estonia, among abandoned hydropower plants, a power station and an old chemical works. This route follows the film's story through those places: the factory and power plant seen before the Zone, the gate, the river plants where the journey was shot, a highway bridge and the power station that smokes behind the final homecoming. Exact spots are often unrecorded, so most pins are approximate.
Sound! Euphonium follows the Kitauji High School concert band, and its story is set in Uji, Kyoto. The route follows Kumiko's commute on the Keihan Uji Line, crosses Uji Bridge, joins the Agata Festival and climbs Daikichiyama for the view of town. The school itself is fictional, so the route pins a real station in its place.
Slam Dunk follows Hanamichi Sakuragi, who joins the Shohoku High School basketball team to impress a girl and turns out to be a natural. Its Shōnan coast is real: a railway crossing from the anime opening, a seaside station renamed for a rival school, and the beach where the film ends. The route runs from the Kamakurakōkōmae crossing to Kugenuma Beach in Fujisawa, with the model for Ryonan High School and the Hiratsuka gymnasium on the way.
The second season of The White Lotus moves to a luxury resort in Sicily, following the staff and wealthy guests through a week of sightseeing days, villa parties and opera nights. Guests explore Taormina's Greek theatre, Daphne drags Harper down to Baroque Noto, and Tanya falls in with a wealthy Brit whose Palermo villa hides an ugly twist. This route visits the real filming locations in episode order, from the San Domenico Palace hotel to the island beach of the finale. The show swaps two villas across the island: its Noto palace is really Villa Tasca outside Palermo, and Quentin's Palermo villa is Villa Elena near Noto.
Into the Wild tells the true story of Christopher McCandless: he graduated from Emory University in Atlanta in 1990, paddled the Colorado River into Mexico, worked in Carthage, South Dakota, and in April 1992 walked onto the Stampede Trail outside Healy, Alaska. He died in an abandoned bus that August, aged 24. Jon Krakauer wrote the book in 1996; Sean Penn filmed it in 2007. The route follows his documented trail. The Stampede Trail is dangerous, and this route is not an invitation to retrace the last part of it.