Customer Reviews

Rick Steves' Paris 2005

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Paris is the ultimate European travel destination, and Rick Steves knows Paris. This is the only travel guide first-time visitors will need to explore the city's bohemian cafés, its fascinating labyrinth of streets and neighborhoods, and its many, great art museums. I took two travel guides with me on my recent Christmas-to-New-Year's visit to Paris, and this proved to be the much better of the two.

Steves' guide not only offers helpful maps of east and west Paris, guided walks through "historic Paris," and through the Champs Elysees, Marais, Rue Cler, Montmartre, and Left Bank areas of the city, and insightful commentary on touring the Louvre, Orsay, Picasso, and Rodin museums and Pere Lachaise Cemetery (where Proust, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, and Colette, among others, are buried), but it also leads readers to numerous opportunities to experience Parisian culture on their own, beyond the pages of this book. For instance, Steves encourages his readers to create their own adventure by "hopping on and off" the city bus #69 route through Paris. For first-time travelers to Paris, this guide is essential.

G. Merritt

I just got back from 9 days in greater France and 5 days in Paris with 3 kids (7, 9, 14 years). Although dumb to try with kids the only thing we reserved was a car. I bought 6 books to get ready but only used Rick Steve's France 2005 on the road. A bit off season (April 14-28) we walked up and got rooms in every mid priced hotel Rick suggested. All were great and just as described. It even got us a free 5 person breakfast at our Rue Cler hotel (worth ~40 euro). Rick's rating system on what to see (and what not to see) was right on target. Next time I would make reservations ahead of time but with confidence that Rick's picks can not go wrong. My National Geographic "Paris" was OK for history lessons but the only book worth buying for travel was Rick's.

Rick Steves has been traveling in Europe since 1969...in 1976 he started Europe Through The Back Door, a travel business that introduces travelers to the back doors of Europe. You don't view Paris (or any other European city) through the windows of a tour bus...you are able to get up close and personal with the city and its occupants...explore the city.
Paris is a big city...there's so much to do, so little time. This is the only guide book I took with me for my first trip to Paris (in addition to a phrase book) and the only book I'm taking my fifth trip to Paris. Armed with this book, you can easily navigate through the Louvre, stroll through the Marais district and take a day trip to Versailles, just to name but a few. There's a wealth of information in this book.
Rick gives it to you straight...you get the good, the bad and the ugly. There are many tips in this book including information on hours and admission prices of museums, good places to eat and sleep, shopping sites, tourist traps, day trips out of Paris, in addition to some survival phrases.
Highly recommended!

I borrowed quite a number of tour books on Paris before our visit and did the comparison. This book is the best and we ended up buying it and followed almost exactly the itinerary in the book. It was excellent because we got to see the tour sites and the local places too. Highly recommended.

Just finished a 5 night stay in Paris and Rick Steves' Paris 2005 was an indespensible guide. I used the book to read up on the main sites before going and it also has useful day planning guides. I also like the way that it doesn't waste space with loads of hotel reviews and restaurant reviews. Once you choose a hotel, which you can usually do better with TripAdvisor for more current information, that section of a guide book is then just wasted space. Anyway Rick's book was also very helpful in explaining how to catch the metro and how best to get to each tourist site. And face it, we're there to be tourists so I want to see the Eiffel tower, Notre-Dame etc, I don't want to read about some backwater art gallery if I only have four days. Rick also includes good city walks and guided tours of the main museums which saves you having to buy the audioguides at each museum. For the city walks though, I pretty soon got sick of looking at the book while walking down the street so I ended up just wandering around the neighbourhoods for awhile checking out the shops and cafe and then used the walk as a guide to find my way back out. The maps in the book are well designed and are of a convenient size for easy reference. I was able to carry the book with me everywhere and whip it out to find the nearest metro or street to the tourist site I was looking for. Overall this book made my trip very easy and enjoyable. I'm going to buy some more for my future trips to Europe.

Rick Steves is one of the greatest tour guides of all time, he has spend hundreds of hours researching for these books, weeeeellllllllll worth the money. He tells you the best places to go, stay, eat, shope and great walking maps. Ive tried lonely planet before but it didnt compare to this.

I think this is a very good book for pre-trip planning. Rick describes all of the "must sees" in Paris, as well as explaining how to really appreciate and enjoy the city. One of the most useful parts, I think, is where he offers suggested itineraries for those with 3 days, 5 days, etc. in Paris. This really helped us to decide what we wanted to see and do with the limited time we had (even though we did not follow his suggestions exactly).

It does not have an extensive list of ratings for hotels and restaurants. He mentions just a few that he personally can recommend. If you don't want to take his recommendations then another guide (like Frommer's, mentioned in another review) is definitely worthwhile. He does, however, give good background information on how to pick a hotel or restaurant for yourself, and I found that more useful than a simple listing with star ratings.

Overall, this is a good book on Paris and most definitely worth the cover price. It is excellent for pre-trip planning, though probably not the book you want to carry with you as you stroll down the Rue de Rivoli.

We had the great fortune to spend 3 days in Paris during the middle of May; an absolute perfect time to visit this fabulous city. This book went with us every second of our trip. We did Steves' walking tour which was 'heavenly.' This is the way to see Paris. The only problem we had was at the end of the first day my son noticed that we had spent an entire day doing what Rick does in one third of a day! We didn't care though as we never felt rushed and were able to backtrack or spend more time visiting all the wonderful shops. When we go back, this book will go with us again!

This book is a good source of information for pretrip planning. The tours were good suggestions also, but it is hard to read and walk when you have another person with you who isn't patient. This book also needed a more complete map section. The Rue Cler suggested hotels and restaurants were great.

I love his books and I loved this one. It has all the right info (museum hours and transportation info). The book was invaluable because it was so helpful in a variety of different ways. I even relied on his pronunciation guides. Thumbs up.