Customer Reviews

City Walks: Paris: 50 Adventures on Foot

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My husband and I received these walking cards as a gift before our first trip to Paris. The cards are are larger than a deck of cards-I believe about 4x6 and have a map on one side and then a walk on the otherside, which starts at the top with a description, followed by the Metro stop that you will need to get off on to start your adventure. The card then lays out your walk, including sites to see, (both on the beaten path and off), cafes or restaurants to visit and areas of interest. Each card leads you back to the closest metro stop.

We found these cards very useful, both in planning our trip, by reading the cards and finding the areas that interested us most, to choosing cards before each day started to tuck into our pockets so we had our information with us.

I used these cards in conjunction with the DK Eyewitness guide, and was able to make a list of sites to see, and then looked through my pack of cards before leaving on the trip and coordinating the sites with the cards that matched each site we hoped to see. That way, I could easily choose, say the Louvre for my adventure that day, and next to the site, was my corresponding card #. This worked very, very well and allowed us to plan our trip with a minimum of hassle. The cards are also available for the city of New York, and when I plan a trip there I plan to buy the cards for that site as well.

These cards are fantastic and I highly recommend them to use in conjunction with the DK Travel guides.

Pick a card and have an adventure!!!!!

I bought these cards just before my first trip to Paris in December. My thoughts and a few lessons learned:
1) How to use the cards is a small challenge -- to use them most successfully, you need to have a compass to make sure that you don't start off in the mirror-image, or upside down direction. It took a couple of course corrections before we got on track with the first walk we tried. That said, the level of detail on the maps was very good - far better than some of the maps the tourist outfits handed us where we sometimes found ourselves "off the map". The street numbers are accurate, the landmarks are solid, the visual scale and detail of the maps line up very well in comparison to what you'll actually encounter when walking the streets. If the map says street A is 3 streets up and at a 30 degree angle, it generally is.
2) I needed to plan out with some detail which cards to use beforehand because they're kind of awkward to work with when you're out and about. Carrying around the whole box all the time didn't seem very practical. You can't exactly quickly flip through for the card that covers any landmark you might happen to find yourself at either. I typically decided where I wanted to go ahead of time, and then looked around for the corresponding card(s) at the hotel and put those in my pocket.The cards are very durable -- for hanging out in my pocket, they showed little wear and didn't bend much at all.
3) The suggested stops, shops and activities were, in my opinion, very thoughtful and interesting. My companion, however, was a little cynical and assumed that the sites listed were the ones that paid the most to get on the cards. I don't know if he's right, but for instance, I did note that the cards suggest a lot of cafes by name - they do not suggest many/hardly any restaurants and those they do mention, like Brasserie Lorraine, seemed to be objects of visual interest (the oyster display and lobster tanks) rather than menu endorsements. I will say, having made a winter trip to Paris, that the walking tour season is a little lackluster. Some of the things the card recommends (like eating a leisurely meal outside) seemed a little more plausible when the temperatures climbed out of the single digits.

I didn't get this box of walks until my second visit to Paris and now would make a point of buying these cards for any holiday destination.
Choose 3 walks (they generally all form a daisy chain) and make a day of it.
Easy to follow maps without over-burdensome commentary. Who wants to spend their nose in a book while walking? A few highlights per walk that you can make your own, or skip.

These cards give you great ideas for exploring different neighborhoods and places to stop along the way. But you need to be careful that the directions are correct. I went through about 20 cards (combined walks each day). And each day there was a card with a slight, but important, error in it: the path on the map was drawn incorrectly, street names were incorrect, or the written direction said to go down a street when really you needed to go up the hill. They're useful and I recommend them, but just make sure you have another map with you in case you get a bit lost. But getting lost can be half the fun of exploring a new city.

We just came back from Paris and it was a wonderful trip thanks to the City Walks Cards! My husband and I would choose about two cards in the morning and have a perfect day of walking around different areas of Paris. Then we would come back to our hotel, rest a bit, and for the afternoon go for another walk. These cards and a book with pictures are really all you need to have a great time.

I wish we had NY City Walks cards when we stopped in NY and stayed there for a few days, because we ended up walking a whole lot and not really feeling like we explored the city as well as we did Paris.

Next time we take a trip I will make sure to buy the "City Walks" cards for that city (and hope that they have them).

Having just returned from a visit to Paris, we found these cards to be marginally helpful and interesting to us. Each of the 50 cards contains a map on one side and text on the other, and each walk contains information of historical and architectural interest as well as some merchant and restaurant suggestions. this sounds good on paper, and I found the cards to be useful when planning our days, but by necessity the text was really short on facts and too long on merchants. I think this could be useful but if you really want a walking tour, you'd be better off getting something more lengthy and detailed. the cards are handy for throwing in your pocket, but not all streets are marked.

What a great idea...the cards give you a walking tour w/o the hassle of a walking tour. You can take your own pace, decide where to stop and for how long, and you dont have to pay $70 per person for each walk! We jotted down ideas from several cards and took about four of them with us. The information on the back and the map on the front were equally valuable. An especially great tool for "first timers" that don't want to only see the tourist side of paris.

I had never been to Paris so I bought this little gem of adventures. Every morning when my husband & I decided what part of town we were going to visit, we took the cards of that area with us. They were fantastic! And the maps are clear enough that you can vear off the path for a while and then get right back on. Highly recommneded!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that this product was not a book but individual cards that come in a box. This means that you can pick a particular card and go without having to lug around a large guidebook. It makes you more conspicuous among the crowd and if you are traveling with family or friends, you could each use different cards and go on multiple tours at the same time by yourself. The portability of these cards is very useful but it's also somewhat of a double-edged sword. Since they are individual, note-sized cards they do not provide as detailed information as other tours. They provide the basic points and a small map. You definitely need to have a larger, more detailed map like Paris Pratique, with you when using these. Additionally, since these cards don't allow for much space, the background of each site you see is only explained minimally. I also worried about misplacing the cards or getting them out of order. However, this could easily be solved by punching a hole in the top and placing them on a binder ring. Overall, the tours were exciting and provided numerous excursions. I would suggest this set to repeat visitors of Paris who have been to most of the main attractions and are looking for itineraries into some of Paris's "forgotten neighborhoods" such as the Canal St. Martin area or the 13th- both of which are covered in this series. For the first time visitor, these cards may not provide as much information as one desires.

Having now read the walks described on these eminently portable cards, I can't imagine going to Paris again without them, no matter how many travel apps I might have on my iPhone. Of course one always "discovers" a city more completely on foot, but these guides double or triple the potential discovery quotient of any given day and, because of their shape and size, don't make one look like a tourist.

They're fun, they're insightful, and they let you start your visit to Paris even before you leave home. Also, they'd make a brilliant gift for anyone who might be headed to Paris. So glad I found them.