Customer Reviews

The Rough guide to French Hotels & Restaurants, 2002

5 star:		(3)
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Do you dream of renting a car and roaming France wherever a tree-lined road takes you? Of being able to be captivated by the flowers and stones of a quiet town and wish you could stay one night? This book is the English translation of the Guide Routard, relied upon by the French for their vacations with dead-on descriptions of hotels and restaurants most of us can afford. With this book you can confidently soujourn so far off the beaten path that you may well be the only American that hotel will see this year -- or at least maybe this week.

The hotels listed are the best of the two stars, meaning that you'll find character if not always the firmest of mattresses. The restaurants are truly the best that France has to offer for the local night out and the family Sunday lunch. I wouldn't hesitate to stop at any of their suggestions and I know I won't break the vacation budget.

I have found the Rough Guide (in English) or Routard (French) the second most useful hotel and food guidebook for France, after the Michelin Red Guide. I take both along because The Rough Guide offers less expensive suggestions, its range sometimes bridging from Michelin to Let's Go (the specialists for cheap). The Rough Guide includes more remarks than Michelin, so it's the sort of guide that is worth checking out before arriving, to find places you'll like. I agree with another reviewer that it offers listings for more towns than many popular U.S. issued books for France, so it's especially useful for those of us loving the countryside and finding the byways.

I'm slightly shocked to be the first reviewer of this guidebook, which is the best of it's kind I have ever seen. It is strictly a resource for locating restaurants and hotels in France, with little or no guidance about the sites that the towns offer.

That said, I cannot recommend this book too highly. What it is is a guide to small hotels and restaurants offer special value, ambiance, food, or comfort in virtually every city, town, and village in all of France. This guide will allow you to find that 13th century hotel in Dinan or that old restaurant in Troyes. Most of the offerings here are exceptional value in some way, usually offering exceptional comfort at moderate prices. As such it fits below the Michelen Red guides but often offers much better value than the Red Guide. France offers much in culture and cuisine, and staying and eating in historic places can add much to one's experience.