Drive and Listen: Website offers sights and sounds of cities around the world for virtual holidays

How often do you think back to places you've visited around the world and remember what it was like just driving around, or hitting the road to the nearest beach?

With the windows down and the music up, you people watched as you headed through town.

Now, some smart folks with creative ideas, you can relive those moments from the comfort of your own home... well almost.

A website called Drive and Listen lets you virtually hit the road.

You start by choosing from a list of dozens of cities around the world and hitting play, and there you are with dashcam video from someone's car as they drive the streets of that particular city. 

Additionally, a live feed from a local radio station is broadcast at the same time and there's even an option to include the road noise being recorded by the camera as well.

The website's creator Erkam Şeker, a Turkish student living in Munich, told Lonely Planet he initially created the website as a way to deal with being stuck inside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I missed strolling through my city, even the traffic and the bustle of daily life, so I started looking at online videos of Istanbul," Şeker said.

"It was a lot of fun to see my city, and then I thought it would be great to hear some background radio to get the full experience of driving there. I realised that people all over the world probably missed being on the road too."

In the video above you can see cities such as New York, Singapore, London and even Dunedin featuring on the website.

While the experience comes across as live, there's a bit of a trick to how the website is run.

The radio streams are live, but the dashcam footage is taken from YouTube clips submitted by willing drivers from around the world.

At this stage Dunedin is the only New Zealand city on the website, but perhaps that's something that can change post lockdown.