Customer Reviews

Michelin the Green Guide Paris (Michelin Green Guides)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Paris Michelin Green Guide was invaluable for my last visit to France. When I was a kid and lived in Paris we used to have one of these as well and I ordered the updated one this summer before going on my first trip back since I was a teenager. I highly recommend the book for those who want a detailed arrondisement and museum guide on everything there is to do in Paris. Since I lived there, I wanted something that would give me specific details on smaller, lesser known museums as well. This guide does a fabulous job of that. However, if you are a first timer to Paris and France and/or have only a few short days there I am not sure this is the guide for you - you might be better off with an Eyewitness guide or Lonely Planet Guide that will tell you what to see if you only have a short time period to work with. If you have been before or are spending a while in the city this is the guide you want - it will list places you have never even heard of before with details about times/days open (very important to know in Paris!!) and phone numbers, prices, etc etc with mini maps on each area of Paris.

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!

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

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!

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.

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.)

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.

It would be hard to plan a visit to Paris with just this book, the alphabetical organization means you have to keep referring to a map (provided) or other guide. The hotel and restaurant information is brief, about 25-30 pages.

This book is the ideal guide to the cultural sites in the city. I think that you will not find the breadth of information contained in this book anywhere else, certainly not in such a condensed form. One is tempted to say: if it is not in the Michelin Guide, then it is not important.

Michelin's Green Guide is the most reliable of all short guides to Paris sights and has the best maps. For complete hotel and restaurant information, you will need Michelin's Red Guide, available in Paris-only or all-France editions. Again, Michelin is by far the most reliable judge of hotel and restaurant standards in France, as the fame of its star-system shows.

The Michelin Green Guide to Paris is the best, the finest guide to the sights. No other guide that I have found is so complete with the history of the sights down to the smallest of detail. Once you've done the Louvre (covered completely here) and all the other primary & secondary sights in Paris, the Miche will tell you about the the police museum, the erotica museum, the hunting museum, etc.
HOWEVER, especially for the first or second visit to Paris, you will still need a Frommer's or Fodor's because the Miche is weak on hotels & restaurants and does very little on the standard tourist stuff such as getting to Paris from the airport, what to bring, etc.

I took three guidebooks to Paris, and the apartment where I stayed had a library containing several others left behind by previous guests. This guide is the one I used the least. It is also the one most-often left behind. OK, so everyone raves about the Michelin guides, BUT I got more mileage out of an excellent street map (The Paris Mapguide) and Rick Steves' Paris 2006 which I found was easier to use (excellent index), more interesting to read, and the commentary helpful in making decisions. Yes, my Michelin stayed in Paris, as well.

There is no longer any reason to buy this edition of the Michelin Guide to Paris. The 2011 edition is fully updated and is much more usefully organized by the areas or arrondisements of the city.

I took this 2001 edition along on several trips to Paris in the mid-2000's and it is extremely hard to use. Someone at Michelin came up with the crazy idea of organizing all the sites alphabetically instead of by area, so you have to constantly refer back and forth all over the book for places that are right next to each other -- "L" for Louvre, "P" for Palais Royale, "T" for Tulieres, etc. etc. This made it very easy to miss things you would have wanted to see that were actually right where you were, except they were somewhere else in the alphabetical organization of the book.

My copy of the 2011 edition arrived today, and this 2001 edition goes in the trash bin TONIGHT!

I used this several years ago when I went to Paris for the first time. Had little idea what the main attractions were, so a friend loaned me his copy of the Michelin Green Guide. Proved to be very useful to understand the city, layout, history, metro system, how to get around, etc. The Green Guide offers information about each of the major (and minor) attractions in Paris (all rated by stars, 5 being highest), which is useful in itself. But it also offers short walking trip suggestions, so you can see the sites in Paris by foot, from the best perspective. Highly recommended for anyone traveling to Paris for the first time. I am now a French teacher and use it for a unit where my students research a Parisian monument, then write an itinerary.

While it does not have all to the best places to stay and eat, it has enough of them to make this guide a worthy travel companion.

I used this guide 30 years ago and found it invaluable when I visited and toured Paris, so much so that when my daughter told me she was going to Paris, I immediately ordered the guide for her. I know she will rave about it when she returns to the US.