Moleskine City Notebook - Paris

by Moleskine

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 3.5 x 0.5 inches ; 6.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• ASIN: B000NBIYC2
• Item model number: CN001PA
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,146 in Office Products (See Top 100 in Office Products)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 2, 2007

Product Description

The Moleskine City Notebook is a treasurehouse waiting to be filled with experience and observation. The beloved Moleskine notebooks transformed into the ideal traveler's companion serve business traveler and the pleasure traveler alike with elegance and the necessary luxury of great design and excellence in craft.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Do-It-Yourself Travel Notebook, August 11, 2007

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Moleskine City Notebook - Paris (Office Product)

This is a very unusual product and I would strongly encourage anyone considering getting one to be completely aware of what it is before they purchase it. First, if you are looking for a single travel guide to prepare you for your trip to New York (or anywhere else there is a guide for), this is very close to worthless, if not entirely worthless. I would call one's attention to the title of the product. It is a "Notebook." That means that most of the pages are blank. This literally is a book for taking notes in.

So what do you get when you buy this? Every book in the series follows the same format. First there is a personal information page with address, phone, allergies, family doctor, passport number, then map information with public transportation maps. Then follows information on the various forms of transportation with phone numbers and websites, including cabs, buses, other forms of public transportation, and airports. There are some blank itinerary pages, measurement and speed conversion charts, size conversion charts (for shoppers), then a long series of neighborhood maps, including an index. And that's it. The final two-thirds of the notebook are blank. The next 20 or so pages are completely blank and unlined for whatever use you want to put them to. Next come several pages intended for writing down names of restaurants, bars, museums, historical sites, hotels, or whatever. The book also comes with unlabeled tabs with stickers to use as desired (for theaters, concert halls, or whatever you desire) as well as tracing paper for, as the label says, "Itineraries or Whatever." Finally, there is the usual pocket at the back that is found in all Moleskine products.

For some people this is going to be an absolutely useless product. But for many this will be remarkably useful. In fact, I can envision two uses for this notebook. First, those who are planning a trip to one of the places for which Moleskine has produced a book. Let's say one has consulted the Blue guide, the Eyewitness Guide (by DK), a Rough Guide, the Michelin guide, and the Let's Go guide. Maybe you've bought all of these, making for five guides. No way do you want to drag all of these on your trip or more than one on your flight. So what might you do? You might take the Moleskin Notebook, record into it all the places you want to see, restaurants you want to dine at, museums you want to stroll through, and anything else you want to do while in your destination of choice, and record it there. So the Moleskine City Notebook can serve as a distillation of all the various travel guides, web sites, and other resources you have consulted. And instead of hauling about a large Fodor's guide, you can carry about this small Notebook that can easily fit into a backpack, purse, should bag, or even pocket.

The only downside is that the Moleskine City Notebook is only as good as you make it. If you do a good job of planning your trip, it will be filled to the brim with useful and helpful information. If not, it will be as unhelpful as you have made it.

There is a second use to which the City Notebook can be put to use, though it is not one for which it was primarily designed. You could use it for the city in which you live, should you live in one of the cities for which one is made. I live, for instance, in Chicago. I have bought one of these so that I can over time use it to record every bit of helpful information that I might find useful or helpful. I can record what hours the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore (the real one, not the trade version on 57th Street) is open. The hours for the Chicago Public Library and the Newberry Library. Phone numbers of restaurants and addresses of bars. And so on and so forth. Granted, these books will only benefit those who live in one of those cities, but for the U.S. New York, Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are pretty populated areas.

So this is a very well conceived product though it absolutely has to be stressed that it is a specialized one. Please note: THIS ISN'T FOR EVERYONE. If you don't want to use the Notebook to plan your trip it is going to be very close to worthless. I'll emphasize again: this is only as good a product as you make it. But if you use it to help you plan your trip, it could be the single item you would most loathe to be without after your notebook.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Paris Travel Necessity!, May 8, 2007

By 

Kaley K. Mish - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Moleskine City Notebook - Paris (Office Product)

My husband & I just returned from our first trip to Paris. I read about this guide in a travel magazine and ordered it before our trip. We had many Paris travel books and decided to take this guide and 2 regular books. The maps and street guide in this small notebook were superior to the maps in the other (very heavy) guidebooks and the maps we received in Paris. We walked every day and used this guide extensively. Of course it does not contain restaurant recommendations, that you must get elsewhere. Using this guide, we kept a journal of our visit including restaurants, meals, costs, interesting people we met...in short, this guide was a gem and a true keepsake of our wonderful trip. In addition to it's light weight and compact size, it is unobtrusive...you don't look too touristy carrying it around. Top rating!

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Inflated "List Price" and False Discount, April 17, 2007

By 

Guy in Pants (Houston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Moleskine City Notebook - Paris (Office Product)

These books are a good idea for the repeat visitor to a city-- basically just a place for notes in the lovely (I think) Moleskine format. The maps, though, can be found better and cheaper on other places. MORE IMPORTANT, this seller has claimed a falsely inflated list price and consequent discount that is misleading. The list price for these books is 17.95. Check in any book store. Shame on the seller.