Customer Reviews

Paris (EYEWITNESS TRAVEL GUIDE)

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In a sea of dismal travel books, the Eyewitness Travel Guides published by Dorling Kindersley stand out like a lighthouse. Last year we traveled to Paris and relied heavily on this Paris guidebook. Not only were the maps, directions, and recommendations absolutely perfect, but the high quality of this book and its absolute comprehensiveness (especially in light of its price) make it a must-buy. Unlike its drab Fodor's counterpart, beautiful images in this guide easily recall some of our best moments, making it a keepsake even after the trip. The flexible, plasticized cover also means it stays looking nice, even after spending all day in a crowded backpack. All told, the perfect travel guide and another in a long line of excellent Dorling Kindersley books. A 10! Dan Edelen

I have the brand new year 2000 edtion of this book and am planning my 9th trip to Paris. I have compared the other guide books with this and find this is the one I'm taking with me. The maps are great. On some of the streets it actually shows you where the numbers begin, especially helpful on long streets, so you do not start at the wrong end. The pictures are great along with brief descriptions and layouts of the parks and famous buildings. Contrary to what I have read. the size is good with over 400 pages it is a compact, tightly bound book with a durable cover. The street guide in the back is wonderful when used inconjunction with the maps. As a travel agent, I recommend this book as most useful.

This book combines the two things essential to a travel guide: 1. Helpful information 2. Content that gets you excited for your trip. I bought this book about a month before I went to Paris. Based on the book I planned on what area I would stay. (St. Germain de Pres) I ended up loving that area. After looking at the photos and reading the descriptions I was beside myself in anticipation for my trip. Once in Paris, the guide did not let me down. The metro map in the back was invaluable as well as the many maps contained in the book. Since I had studied the book so much before I left, I felt like I knew Paris like the back of my hand by the time I got there. A lot of the descriptions of things are no terribly in depth, but it does spend a lot of time on the Louvre and many other main attractions. But, if you are looking for adventure off the beaten path, this might not be your book. I also particularly liked the fact it gave you about five walking tours around Paris that could been done in 90 minutes where you cover a lot of ground.

My wife and I went to paris with about 5 different books and about 6 different maps. Turns out this was the only one we really needed. We were able to find and do more in 1 week than anyone we have ever met. Including people who went for 3 weeks. This guide covers everything by district/quarters.

We never would have found the Catacombs without this - and I strngly recommend them. It also gives you a chance to make decisions ahead of time of what you would like to do and what you might like to do given the time. It is not exactly the perfect book because it does not always tell you the prices of museum passes and ticket prices. So I'll save you some time. Buy the Museum Carte at the very first place you go. This will get you into every single place and museum like thing you could wnat from the Louve, Musee De Orsey, Georges Pompedeau and even the Museum Rodin and Versailles!!!!. If you use it 3 times, you have saved money. Also, The museums have "Special" entrances and lines for Carte holders so keep your eyes open cause you can skirt the long long long lines and go on in. But make sure you have this book under your arm where ever you go.

The Eyewitness Travel Guide series is my favorite series in the if-you-could-only-take-one-book-what-would-it-be category. Others may be more comprehensive (Lonely Planet, for example) or better suited to particular topics or interests. But if you're going to, in this case, Paris, for a week or two, and you know you want to see the major sites and some out-of-the way places too, this is your book.

What is unique about these books? This book has beautiful photos, but so do the Insight Guides. It lists lots of things and places to see, do, eat and stay, but don't they all? Two things set this series apart: organization and maps.

The guide organizes itself according to areas of the city. This does not necessarily break down according to "arrondisement," but in a way that is more useful to the tourist. Its sections organize things to see and do by location and neighborhood, which makes planning schedules yourself much easier, as opposed to following suggested schedules (which invariably contain stops you aren't interested in) or having to flip from the museum section to the parks section to the monuments section to the churches section and trying to figure out which ones to see on the same day. This is made even easier by the maps.

In addition to excellent conventional maps of the city, this guide has drawings that show axonometric, aerial views of neighborhoods, with building-by-building, house-by-house depictions of what the neighborhoods look like and how they are laid out. You can see how the things you want to see in that neighborhood are situated in relation to each other. It's like getting a helicopter tour of that neighborhood before you arrive on the ground. No other guidebooks have this feature. I think the combination of the neighborhood organization layout and these unique maps (which are right in the relevant sections) make day planning a breeze and even fun.

On the negative side for some, the restaurants and lodgings are in separate sections. I don't find this is a problem. I'm not going to be looking for a place to stay every night while I'm sightseeing anyway--I figure out the one place I'm staying in advance and use that as my base. And we often plan dinner locations separately from rest of the day's activities and wing it for lunch. So I consider the separation of the lodging and restaurant sections to be an advantage. But if you like to plan all your meals in advance in the same neighborhood you'll be sightseeing in, or plan to wander up and down the streets looking for a new hotel every day, or a recommended restaurant in the 'hood, you'll have to do a bit of flipping back and forth between sections.

This is a great trip planning tool, and with its beautiful photos and smashing map/aerial drawings, it will get you excited about your upcoming trip, too.

On my trip to Paris, I found this book to be indispensible and carried it with me every day. I would recommend it (and already have to others and my library) for anyone visiting Paris for the first time.

I am a bit of a travel book fanatic. I buy and read many for every place I visit. I am also a Paris fanatic having visited 5 times in the past 13 years.

While other books do a better job of providing hotel and restaurant info, this is the one book that I brought with me in my camera bag every day when marching around the city. The photos are great and help a great deal in terms of choosing what to see.

The maps are mostly great, although I must admit that I found the detail to be slightly lacking in some cases - the map of Versailles' gardens lacking (it omits the "Hameau de la Reine" which is the best thing there in my opinion) and the map of Pere Lachaise was missing some of the minor paths.

If you are going to Paris, definitely get this one and perhaps the Rough Guide to Paris for hotel/restaurant recs. The Eyewitness book is a nice book to have after the trip, too, as its photos, diagrams and maps are something you can regard as souvenirs of your visit.

The Eyewitness Travel guide series offers the best system in travel guide books. The Paris guide is no exception.

These books include everything. Street maps, metro maps, museum prices, times, information on EVERYTHING.

I left to study abroad in Paris last year, and spent lots of money on essentially useless guidebooks. The only one I used, and the only one I should have saved room for in my suitcase was the Eyewitness guide.

I used it my entire semester, finding new things in it all the time that I wanted to see, and just as an essential tool in Paris.

The first couple of days, the Metro map was indespensable.

This guidebook is one that should not be left at home. It offers hotels, restaurants, museums, and pictures of nearly everything, to boot.

I guarantee that this guidebook will not let you down. The Eyewitness guides are all you need, and all I will ever purchase in the future for my travel guidebook needs.

Enjoy Paris! Bon Voyage.

I also purchased this guidebook based on good reviews I have read such as those above. I know Paris fairly well, but like to collect new guidebooks of the city to supplment my collection as I go almost yearly. This is one of the worst Paris guidebooks I have seen. I think it can only be considered good if one is impressed by color photographs, but do not know Paris well and want only a very limited tourist overview. Even then, this book has numerous inaccuracies in it and very limited information on hotels and restaurants. I wonder how well the authors even know Paris. As one example, in the section on using the metro and the various tickets/passes available, it makes numerous errors in one paragraph. First, it claims "the one-week card (carte hebdomadaire) gives unlimited travel in zones 1 and 2". Actually, it is not really called a "Carte Hebdomadaire", it is a Carte Orange for which you can buy either a weekly (ie, hebdomadaire) or a monthly ticket (mensuelle). In any case, it IS unlimited travel but one can buy it for as many zones as one wants, not just two. It gives virtually no information on the tourist metro pass (Paris Visite) except to say it exists (no prices, no zones, no comparison to others, etc.--as a matter of fact, this card is a poor deal for tourists but they aren't told that here). Then, it claims the "Carte Orange is a one-month card for all zones". This also is wrong. As noted, the Carte Orange can contain either a weekly or monthly ticket; like the weekly pass, the monthly ticket also can be bought for as many zones as you want (from 2-8), it is not automatically for "all zones". In a different section, it refers to a "carnet" as a "metro pass." This is wrong--it is not a pass, it is simply a packet of ten single metro tickets, which has a discounted rate for buying 10 at a time. Also, the carnet is not even mentioned in the basic section on metro passes/tickets, but elsewhere. This is just one example of the inaccurate information in this book, and metro fares and passes are the most basic information for travelers, and extremely easy information for travel guide authors to obtain. I can only imagine how they might botch up more complicated stuff. I also agree that their peculiar and arbitrary manner of dividing the city into their own named quarters (rather than using the official Paris arrondisement definitions) is ill-advised and confusing, because it does not conform to standard addresses and all available information on the city. Practically, their hotel and restaurant recommendations are quite limited compared to other guidebooks. In the entire city, they only list a couple hotels in a moderate budget category (eg, maybe $75-125 per night)--their hotel recommendations are definitely geared towards the expensive. Also, they give hardly any information on the hotels. Unlike most other good guidebooks, they include extremely superficial information on the history of Paris. In addition to these problems in accuracy and usefulness, the book is very heavy so you probably wouldn't want to carry it around with you (it isn't heavy due to content length, but due to the weight of the paper), plus the pages are rather narrow and an odd size so are hard to keep open and read. And, for all this, I think it is the most expensive guidebook to Paris by about $5-10. In sum, I think almost any other well-known name guidebook on Paris would be preferable for actual content, planning and value for the money. If one wants to spend the money for this as a nonessential edition for browsing at home, to enjoy the photos, it is adequate.

I recently got back from my third trip to Paris, and of all the guidebooks I have brought with me over these past 10 years, this was the one I used, and enjoyed, the most. Let's face it, every good guide book out there has helpful hotel and restaurant recommendations, and since individuals ofter have very subjective and different perceptions of the same places, you can never please everyone with those picks. In advance of the vacation, I not only used these guide books but also browsed the web ... for info, and didn't always use picks from the Eyewitness book. I also purchased metro and museum passes online before the trip, which I highly recommend.

So why did I like it so much? While most books will suggest places to go and give you helpful information such as opening hours, price, etc., no other book can match these books for illustrations, descriptions, and unique three dimenional "cut-out" sketches to give you an idea of the scope or architectural design of places like the Pantheon, Basilica Sacre Couer, Saint Chappelle, etc. The night before you visit an attraction such as those listed above, you can read a multi-page description, learning about the historical significance of the site, or of efforts to preserve it during WW II, etc. I would consistently get stoked to visit ancient churches, plazas, parks, museums and other attractions after spending ten minutes reading about them in the Eyewitness guide. Then, when standing in the splendor of St. Chappelle for example, you might understand the stained glass scheme a little better.

I should also point out that these books are everywhere in Paris. It is the one guide book my wife and I consistently saw on other restaurant tables, or being held discreetly by other tourists at the Musee de Orsay, for example. There are helpful maps, not only of the city in general, but of individual neighborhoods making small walking tours easy. There are also very detailed guides to getting home from the airport, which made it easy to take the RER train into the city and avoid an expensive cab ride.

Some have snubbed their noses at the book as being for people with no knowledge of Paris who need pictures - I think that's unfair. The 3-D cutouts and pictures are there if you want them, if you care to skip them you can, but the text is as informative and detailed as I have seen in others like Frommers, Fodors, Dummies Guide, etc. The book is also slim enough to stick in a camera bag, or in a handbag of your wife, for discreetly plucking it out during your metro trips. Buy it as far in advance of your trip as possible, and thumb through it at night to get psyched for your trip. Highly recommended.

P.S. And if you buy it and like the format, there is also an excellent Eyewitness Guide to the Loire Valley, with unparalleled information about Loire Valley chateaus, lodging and dining, that I used and really liked.