Customer Reviews

France: The Rough Guide, Fifth Edition (5th ed)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My husband and I took a couple of well known guide books with us on our recent trip to France...but this is the one we found most useful. One invaluable feature is the inclusion of maps. When we got lost in Avignon we had only to open the Rough Guide to find our way. Also, we were able to locate the bus and rail stations on the maps. There is much to be learned by reading a number of guidebooks before you go but this is the one to take with you.

What I like best about the Rough Guides is that they give critical reviews. They will point out the tourist traps and will give negative reviews. I find that Frommer's and Fodor's rarely point out the negatives to a particular hotel or site. The rough guide is very critical and is a great balance to these other guides. I would balance your trip to France with a Fodors (or Frommers) book because the maps and illustrations are often better and there are more higher-end hotels listed.

This book will help you decide where is best to spend your vacation in France. There are clear critical descriptions of all the regions and great general info on getting around in France.

If you aren't interested in "roughing" it and staying in lower priced hotels.. the guides are still very useful in rating attractions, and areas in which to stay... but you will need another book to look at more moderate and luxury hotels.

I would definitely read this book before going to France.

If you are looking for a small book to fit in your back pocket, The Rough Guide France is not for you. If you are looking for a guide that lovingly describes even the smallest French town in careful detail and clear format, then this IS the guide book you should be looking for.

The Rough Guide to France does an excellent job in several areas where many guide books fail. For example, smaller attractions are often overlooked in favor of the larger cities, such as Paris or Lyon. Rough Guide ensures that for those who want to go provincial, they won't be going in blind.

Another merit of the guide is in it's clear, concise format. Not overburdened with irrelevant maps/illustrations (a pet peeve of mine), Rough Guide has clean, simple directions and mapping. This is a vast improvements over Guides like Lonely Planet, where I often feel the editors publish more with an eye towards their own self-satisfaction than towards the serious traveler.

The resturaunt/hotel features are adequate, frequently include useful maps, and will not tax anyone's checkbook too harshly.

Perhaps the greatest strength of this guide is the seeming conviction of the editors to tell you that which you NEED to know for that trip to France. Michelin might the cultural ask-all, DK may have lots of lovely photographs, but Rough Guide is for when you're ready to get serious about your trip to France.

Well-written, informative, with a clear and honest style that should impress both casual and budget traveler alike, The Rough Guide France should be your FIRST PICK in guide books.

This is THE BEST practical guide for visiting France. It's well-organized, with highlights at the front of each chapter, and practical transportation information at the end of each chapter. In addition, their evaluations of a site's merit have, thus far, been right on. While their lodging and dining sections might focus on the lower-end, the accuracy and comprehensiveness of their information more than makes up for it.

The French think they have the best of everything, and to a certain extent, they're right. There can be no question that France contains the most awesome ensemble of visual art, in the form or incredibly diverse architecture, painting and sculpture, of all countries the world over. And it's also true that the geography and cultural diversity of France is varied enough to give the traveler a sample of all Europe. France is the most visited tourist destination on earth, so there's definitely something to this.

Art and architecture aside, we must wonder what all the fuss is about: Food is, by definition, a matter of taste. The notoriously pompous (but thoroughly impressive) French intellect is largely invisible to tourists, reserved for exchange students and long-term expatriates. What is it about France that makes us all swoon? It's the spirituality of the place, the ever-present humanism, and the radiance of imperial history long faded into a slightly uncomfortable egalité that keep hordes of tourists pouring into Notre Dame. We love to see the awesome heights humans can achieve when they're presented with the right combination of spiritual, intellectual and imperial motivation... and an endless supply of expendable labor!

No travel guide can capture the subtlety of this concept. Sure, it can present you with a catalog of architectural landmarks, hotels and restaurants. It can pour out the boring facts about this cathedral and that chateau, but it can't possibly capture the experience of sharing the same physical space with awesome human achievement. You simply must go there, stand silent, and let it all slowly sink in. The dates of construction, height of spires, numbers of "stars" for hotels and restaurants, numbers of pieces of artwork, lists of Nobel laureates, etc... simply don't matter. Forget about it. Put the book down. Stop. Look around, and let the place speak to your soul.

This book is written in standard Rough Guide format, with all the sections you expect. While the historical and literary contexts are quite good, the catalog of places (the bulk of the guide) is so summary that it also comes off as a huge, 1000-page list. France is a place where good hotels and restaurants stay open for decades (and centuries), so the listings are right up to date. The same small hotel in the Latin Quarter in which I stayed almost 20 years ago is still listed, for example.

I'd like to see a bit more coverage of important natural sites in this guide. True, most people come to see Paris and Nice, but more curious travelers will want to explore the Alps and the coast of Brittany. The authors do well presenting the often overlooked wonders of provincial France rather than concentrating all their effort on Paris.

Buy this book if you like nice, fat volumes packed full of words rather than glossy photographs. Rough Guides are intentionally instructive in style and format.

I live along the border of France and Switzerland. I like to take excursions around France and needed a dependable guide. So far, I have found this one to be pretty good, with straightforward basics about how to get around, where to stay and with pretty accurate opinions. I would recommend it overall, but bottom line, the very best resource is Michelin. If I were to buy just one guide I would make it the Michelin green guide, or of course for restaurants, the red guide.

I purchased this book to use for an upcoming trip. I purchased the newest edition which it the 9th.

I found that some of the information has not been checked or updated. For example, there is a aquarium called Nausicaa where the book info was about 5 years out of date.

Other complaints:

1) The writers seem to be extreme leftists in their opinions. If you are a gay vegan tree hugger this is the book for you.

2) Not enough info for people travelling by car. I realize that this isn't Rough Guides focus, but I found the coverage in Rough Guide Italy to be much better.

3) Minimal coverage for people travelling with families.

Positives:

1) Good coverage of camping

2) Breakdown by regions is helpful, as is summary of region in opening paragraph of each chapter.

I still intend on using the guide, although if I had to do it over I would probably buy a different guide.

You certainly wouldn't want to need this book in a hurry. It took almost 4 months for it to be delivered. On top of that, when Amazon lose something in the post, they re-charge your credit card and then refund you-I'm still waiting for my refund having paid twice for a book that took months to arrive. They obviously don't have good customer service as I feel at this stage I should be refunded entirely!!

Other than that this book is very helpful, it has excellent transport tips and guidelines. It also has good detail on all the different regions in France. I like the layout of it too and would chose the RoughGuides over other guidebook brands. I needed information on one particular region in France, how to get there and wanted to know what to do and despite this book being aimed at the whole of France, I still found plenty of information on the town and surrounding areas. There was even really good restaurants recommended for all budgets. Very happy with the book over all.

Best book I've seen on France tourism

The book had hundreds of pages of small text, but very few pictures. The way my wife and I travel, by playing it by ear, this isn't appropriate. I'm not going to sit and read all that. I want a few pictures of a town, a small map to go along with my other maps, and some good ideas of what is good in that particular town. I don't need 80 pages of documentation on it.