Note: I managed to delete this post in a migration some time ago. I have not been able to recover it. I've gotten some e-mails from people reporting the 404, so I'm putting it back online by writing a small summary of what was originally in it.
See it in action on the demo page.
There's also a drop-in jQuery plugin.
The technique works with any framework, though.
A summary, sort of.
Google Maps is relatively resource hungry. On desktops you hardly notice the load time of a Google Map, but on notebooks and smartphones you do.
Instead of loading full JavaScript Google Map, use the Google Static Maps API to load a plain flat JPEG image. When the user clicks/taps that image, replace the image with a full JavaScript Google Map. That way, you get nice and fast page load speeds, and a full featured map when the user interacts with it.
See the demo and the code above for details.