To get some line and polygons into shapely I used My Maps at maps.google.com, exported it as KML and then used this little function:

def ExtractPoints(kml):
  rv = {}
  ns = "{http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2}"
  tree = ElementTree()
  tree.parse(kml)
  for placemark in tree.findall(".//" + ns + "Placemark"):
    name = placemark.findtext(ns + "name")
    print "Found %s" % name
    coordinates_text = placemark.findtext(ns + "LineString/" + ns + "coordinates")
    coordinates = []
    for point_text in coordinates_text.split():
      floats = point_text.split(",")
      coordinates.append((float(floats[0]), float(floats[1])))
    if coordinates[0] == coordinates[-1]:
      rv[name] = Polygon(coordinates)
    else:
      rv[name] = LineString(coordinates)
  return rv

PS: I don't see a way to add a comment to Sean's answer but wonder why he didn't mention Keytree, which I found via another similar question: How do I find out if a given lat lon is in a KML Linear ring using shapely?

To get some line and polygons into shapely I used My Maps at maps.google.com, exported it as KML and then used this little function:

def ExtractPoints(kml):
  rv = {}
  ns = "{http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2}"
  tree = ElementTree()
  tree.parse(kml)
  for placemark in tree.findall(".//" + ns + "Placemark"):
    name = placemark.findtext(ns + "name")
    print "Found %s" % name
    coordinates_text = placemark.findtext(ns + "LineString/" + ns + "coordinates")
    coordinates = []
    for point_text in coordinates_text.split():
      floats = point_text.split(",")
      coordinates.append((float(floats[0]), float(floats[1])))
    if coordinates[0] == coordinates[-1]:
      rv[name] = Polygon(coordinates)
    else:
      rv[name] = LineString(coordinates)
  return rv

PS: I don't see a way to add a comment to Sean's answer but wonder why he didn't mention Keytree, which I found via another similar question: How do I find out if a given lat lon is in a KML Linear ring using shapely?

To get some line and polygons into shapely I used My Maps at maps.google.com, exported it as KML and then used this little function:

def ExtractPoints(kml):
  rv = {}
  ns = "{http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2}"
  tree = ElementTree()
  tree.parse(kml)
  for placemark in tree.findall(".//" + ns + "Placemark"):
    name = placemark.findtext(ns + "name")
    print "Found %s" % name
    coordinates_text = placemark.findtext(ns + "LineString/" + ns + "coordinates")
    coordinates = []
    for point_text in coordinates_text.split():
      floats = point_text.split(",")
      coordinates.append((float(floats[0]), float(floats[1])))
    if coordinates[0] == coordinates[-1]:
      rv[name] = Polygon(coordinates)
    else:
      rv[name] = LineString(coordinates)
  return rv

To get some line and polygons into shapely I used My Maps at maps.google.com, exported it as KML and then used this little function:

def ExtractPoints(kml):
  rv = {}
  ns = "{http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2}"
  tree = ElementTree()
  tree.parse(kml)
  for placemark in tree.findall(".//" + ns + "Placemark"):
    name = placemark.findtext(ns + "name")
    print "Found %s" % name
    coordinates_text = placemark.findtext(ns + "LineString/" + ns + "coordinates")
    coordinates = []
    for point_text in coordinates_text.split():
      floats = point_text.split(",")
      coordinates.append((float(floats[0]), float(floats[1])))
    if coordinates[0] == coordinates[-1]:
      rv[name] = Polygon(coordinates)
    else:
      rv[name] = LineString(coordinates)
  return rv

PS: I don't see a way to add a comment to Sean's answer but wonder why he didn't mention Keytree, which I found via another similar question: How do I find out if a given lat lon is in a KML Linear ring using shapely?