Google Maps Street View Feature Intriguing

I was checking out the latest edition of Google Maps the other day and was pleasantly surprised at the enhanced quality of their "street view" feature.  It was a little disconcerting, however, to see how often different neighborhoods, mine included, were recorded on garbage pickup day, with the ugliness all out there by the street for everyone (in the world) to see.  As for me, I had a broken fan/stand jutting out of my garbage receptacle in plain view for everyone.  And man, my shrubbery was desperately in need of trimming. Thanks a lot, Google!

Still, it was fun to "travel" down various roads, especially ones that I had gone down in the "real" world.  For example, I explored the street view of Midtown Manhattan, first stopping by for a return visit to Junior's restaurant at Broadway and 45th Street, and then going down Broadway in the northerly direction toward Central Park.  Along the way, I noticed the eatery in which my wife, daughter, and myself ate breakfast the first morning of our visit there in April 2010: the EZ Deli.  And there were the stairs that we climbed to the second floor, where there was some seating available for us to eat our food after buying it in the rather cramped (but remarkable for its culinary diversity) ground floor store.

I wonder how extensive street views are for Google.  I'd like to check out some other countries for this feature, but realistically I don't see it happening anytime soon in most other places. But even if this is only a domestic feature of Google, I still see myself playing the role of armchair tourist as I visit places like Philadelphia, Boston, Washington D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, Honolulu, and so on...