The Google/GIS blogosphere is having a field day with the Google Maps easter egg instructing you to “Swim across the Atlantic Ocean” at a distance of 5,572 kilometers (taking 29 days) if you want to drive from any point in the continental USA and Canada to Europe. See for instance any of these posts: Kottke, Google Blogoscoped, Metafilter, and The Map Room.

Apparently, the endpoints of this exhausting aquatic exercise are always Massachusetts and France, no matter how closer other parts of North America and Europe might be. For example, we have this really roundabout route between Newfoundland and the Canary Islands.