Customer Reviews

Michelin Green Guide Provence (Michelin Green Guide: Provence English Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Having just returned form a brief sojourn outside of Avignon(one of numerous visits over the years to the South of France) I found the Green Guide as indispensable as ever.

These oddly shaped, distinctive volumes dispel whatever remains of Peter Mayle's cute and condescending presentation of the region. Here instead is an ancient and noble land of sunlight and wind, which has created strangely shaped stones and mountains surrounding ancient olive groves,endless vineyards, wide rivers, and more Roman remains than can be found in Rome. The magical Middle Ages are here, too, as well as the quintessential visions of Cezanne, the native son, and Van Gogh, the wandering Dutchman. As your eyes do the looking, this highly useful green book will filll you in with all the information you will need on plants, stones (manbuilt and otherwise) weather,rivers, geology, and above all history.

What you see around you is explicated with an appropriate Gallic resserve, accuracy and precision, so that you can meditate on the land without any editorial interference. The format of the Green Guides is unique, reflecting their self-confidence that, like Popeye, and all unique creations, they are what they are.

And the small maps included in the descriptions of many of the most important sites are, as befitting a maker of tires and maps, perfect. If you love France, you will love this book and all the others defining that land for travelers from near and far.

I have lived in France for over two years, and have traveled to over 50 places all over the country.

I have chosen the Provence Green Guide to review because it's my favorite region; though all of the guides are similar. I might also mention that I have not actually seen the English version of the Green Guide - I only use the French ones.

That being said, I have tried and looked at MANY guides of France. The Green Guide (or Guide Vert) is the best for FRANCE. For other countries this is not the case.

The maps are useful; the rating system is very, very useful (and pretty close in my opinion); and the sites they recommend are very good. There is also a recommended walking path for each city map - a sort of top place to walk around if you are rushed, during a train layover for example. The many photos of sites, buildings, and cities is nice; they are often a critical deciding factor in my travel choices. Though more often than not the photos dont do justice to the quality of the fantastic places in France.

There are a few things of course i don't like (in terms of selections of sites et al) but nothing is perfect.

Since the Green Guide is from a French company (Michelin) obviously they can get a lot of good information and insight into the guides. Best of all, they have a regional focus. Since I live in France, my need for a national book is minimal; I only go to more or less one region at a time over a long weekend or week.

The Green Guides let me take my time, give me travel ideas that a France-wide guide would not give, and is pretty reliable.

On a separate note, i do not use any of the times for the sites; in France, opening times are unreliable. You are best off using the net or just taking your chances.

In the end, whatever your guide, France is a fantastic country for tourism and it's also wonderful to live in.

Though still filled with good information, if this book is any indication the Green Guides have been "dumbed down" and reorganized to the point of near un-usability. The older Green Guides were always my go-to guides for planning the itinerary of a trip. Sure I had to look elsewhere for hotels & restaurants, but I could always find readable maps and a well organized guide to the places I wanted to visit. This book is organized into what look like randomly created "zones" which make it nearly impossible to plan a coherent route or to quickly find a particular town or sight - instead of simply looking places up alphabetically, now you have to know which zone it's in and then try to find it, or to use the (not very good) index to find places. It remains to be seen whether this book will be useful once I'm on the ground in Provence, but I've given up trying to use it for planning. Thanks be to online used bookstores - I just ordered a used copy of the 1991 edition for $1 from Abebooks.

Michelin Green Guide: Provence (Michelin Green Guides)
Anyone traveling to Provence should purchase ths guide with one caveat. The guide has its own interpretation of where the Provence is. Most Provence guides include the Cote d'Azur and the Gorge de Verdon. This guide does not, The tours shown on the back cover are not well described in the text. One is better advised to use the tour explanations that correspond to the tours indictated in the front cover map.

I bought Frommer's before purchasing this one. Frommer's is very nicely organized but it doesn't have all the details as I'd like so I ended up buying Michelin book too.
I actually like Michelin's book better than the Frommers. It seems to have more details such as 'what is a good place to park(we will be driving), detail info on buying discount museum tickets, etc' which is great for budget conscious travelers like me.
Two minuses I have: it does not cover the Riviera(since a lot of people tend to go to both places) Also, it 'wastes' too many valuable spaces on history, culture, buiding architecture, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love art and culure but wasting pages on explaining architectural names seem to be a bit too much. I will be walking around with this guide book and I doubt i will be looking or reading these pages. I can always find these info online If I wanted to learn more about them. I rather have them cover more on towns or simply make it shorter to make the book lighter.

Of four guide books I read before planning a two-week trip to Provence, the Michelin book was the best. It helped in selecting the home base (Avignon) and was crucial in planning the daily touring. Thanks to this book we had a wonderful time.

While I still think this series is the best choice because of its detail and authenticity, there are a number of negatives that Michelin needs to fix. I say this not only with respect to the Provence Guide, but also in relation to the Paris Guide, both of which I used extensively in the last two years.

For example, both guides need to sharpen and expand their indexes so they are truly comprehensive. It is maddeningly difficult to guess where a description of a certain site is found in some cases. Take a look at the entries under "Museums" in the Paris guide and you'll see what I mean: many important museums are missing and you'll have a devil of a time finding their descriptions if you don't know in which chapter to look.

The other glaring weakness is the sharp decline in accuracy of the turn-by-turn directions for some of the walking tours. One of the most common errors is confusion between left and right when telling readers which way to walk. I cannot believe this has happened, but it has, and the directions and walking tour maps when taken together frequently left me standing at an intersection scratching my head.

And the Provence guide contains Michelin's typical amusing penchant to give 3 stars to great views. Yes, great views are nice, but "worth a journey"? Not in my book. My cynical explanation for this is that Michelin wants to sell tires, and so encourages readers to drive more kilometers so they wear their tires out faster.

Come on, Michelin, be the best that you can be.

(A note to those who complain that Provence doesn't encompass the Riviera: of course it doesn't; buy the Riviera Guide.)

The green guide for Provence provides a very useful overview, along with pertinent information such as opening/closing times (the Pont du Gard at opening, approx 7:30 am, is not to be missed--marvel in the silence). Used it, along with Rick Steves's France guide in 01, and will use both again in 03.

This handy travel guide is definitely geared for automobile drivers. I was in Provence on a bicycle trip, so I did not find the book as useful as I desired. The book did a grand job of overviewing the entire area; unfortunately, I was only cycling in a small section of Provence and was looking for more detail on the five cities I cycled to. The index was handy and the tabbed sections made information easy to look up and scan. Overall, there were a lot of highlights but not enough substance for my specific vacation needs.

There is a lot of good information in this book, but good luck finding it. What on earth was the publisher/editor thinking of by allowing this book with this exceedingly weak index to go to press. Michelin, you should be ashamed of yourself. Really.

Dog eared pages is the only way relocate anything you may have read earlier without paging through dozens of pages. A real pain as you're zooming through the Provence countryside. Nevertheless, there is decent information in the book.