Customer Reviews

Blue Guide Paris and Versailles, Tenth Edition (Blue Guides)

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I've made >20 visits to France all together. Here are my reviews of the best guides....to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!

Blue Guides

Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.

MapGuide

MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the Metro. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the center of the city.

Time Out

The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!

Let's Go

Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:

Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.

City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.

PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information

MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)

Michelin

Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.

Fodor's

Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:

The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.

SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide

PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit

UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out

CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information

Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide

Lonely Planet

Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.

Comprehensive is the definitive word for Blue Guide Paris and Versailles. This book contains the detail that the glossy, full color guides consistently lack, and after your trip is over, serves as a great reference. It's probably not for the traveller of the "If it's Tuesday it must be Belgium" ilk, but we like to delve into the area's history, arts, and culture, and can't imagine visiting a city like Paris without our Blue Guide. In the back section, it also contains the best synopsis of the region's history that I've come across, and we found ourselves checking facts in it when all the Louis and Charles's got confusing. Pair this volume with one of the glitzier guides for the photos and you can't go wrong. (And you won't have to buy the tourist booklets for every site you visit.)