Looking up past homes online

Rain
I'd love to see the interior of our old houses. My parents lost their first house when I was 9, and due to my melancholy nature back then, it haunted me. I'd regularly revisit it mentally before I went to sleep, trying to make sure that I didn't forget any detail. That house lived in me for a long time. 
 
I'd sometimes ride my bike and visit that part of town just to see the old house, but the new owners changed it dramatically and it was hardly recognizable. The inside must have long since been completely redesigned.
 
Funnily, I just looked it up and the house is now owned by someone with the same last name as I...
 
These days, every now and then I launch Google Map and take a virtual walk in my old hometown. The part of the town where the old house was located isn't mapped yet, but it is cool to see my grandparents house as well as the last house my parents bought before my mother died in the 90s. I worked on that house quite a bit, doing landscaping, planting trees, painting it and taking part in all the renovations.
 
It's was a bit of a shock to see trees that I planted back then which didn't even reach my shoulder the last time I was there that are now taller than the house.
 
I do wish I could take a sneak peak though it may be preferable to just keep the memories intact.

I take Google Maps walks through my home town of Newcastle every now and then. It's amazing how quickly I get lost after having been away for 15 years. And there is so much of it now that I don't recognize. Another thing is that after having lived in New York for most of those 15 years, Newcastle seems so tiny. Not just geographically, but everything in it as well. Buildings I thought were tall now look very short. And roads which seemed wide in my memory now look almost like narrow country lanes. I'm also fascinated by how you can walk around residential areas in England and there are row after row of virtually identical terraced houses, all in very muted colors with virtually no attempt to personalize them. 
 
I think it's very common to get nostalgic about past homes. I'll never forget, sometime in the late 90's I was at a friend's house in Fenham, which is a gritty, student-heavy area of Newcastle. There was a knock at the door, and before I knew it 4 (very high) aging hippies had piled into the living room with eyes like saucers looking this way and that, saying "oh WOW man.....it's the same carpet...the exact same! And are those the same curtains? Oh man the acid we took in this room.." They had evidently lived there in the late 70's, were passing by and decided on a whim to knock on the door. It took us all night to get rid of them as they launched into LSD story after LSD story.