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Rating: 
Summary: A superlative French B & B guide
Review: An American friend resident in France and my wife and I used this guide last May on a trip through much of France. We set out with a fistful of books: three lodging guides in English and three general guides in French including the familiar Michelin. After a few days we used only Sawday. We found it rock-solid: reliable, authoritative, sensible, up to date, well illustrated, easy to use - all we could hope for. We would phone during the day for a place to stay that night and scored most times with our first choice. [A caution: While some proprietors spoke English, we relied on our friend's French for the cell phone.]
All was as advertised: our hosts welcoming, the accommodations clean and comfortable. A few miles from Omaha Beach we stayed in a new extension to a 18th C. manor house on a 100 acre dairy farm. The next morning, after a delightful breakfast, the proprietress gave us a tour of her milking barn. The average cost for was $50 for two, breakfast included.
Some hosts provided dinner for $15 to $30 including wine. On another farm, dinner included home grown vegetables and home brewed aperitif and digestif, all for $14. In Arlanc although we phoned late, the proprietor graciously made a special trip to purchase extra food for a gourmet meal.
It was a memorable, and thrifty, way to meet real people. What's more, Sawday maintains a searchable database for pre-planning and a most helpful staff. Overall, a superb resource.
Rating:
Summary: A superb source if planning a driving trip through France
Review: My wife and I used this book as the basis for a planning a vacation driving through Normandy. We stayed in four different B&B's recommended in the book. We found the reality met or exceeded the descriptions and we were able to enjoy excellent stays. We recomend this book to any traveller to France wishing to use small hotels and B&B's.
Rating: 
Summary: Creating Expectations
Review: This volume describes 721 French B&B's in 370 pages, each B&B keyed to one of 18 useful regional maps. An additional 40 pages provide maps, indices, some French vocabulary and advertising for Sawday's other products. The descriptions are very useful and the book's organization conducive to effective planning of an independent trip. I am using this volume to plan a trip from Nice to La Herradura in southern Spain during during the next few months. This permits me to compare this book to the companion volume, Special Places to Stay:Spain. After reading the Spain volume I expected French B&B's to be as detailed as that of Spain. Certainly it provides information about B&B's in every corner of France. Yes, it too is a marvelous aid for planning the independent trip. Yes it is much stronger than any Rough Guide to France or Spain that I have read. It provides prices, the number and type of rooms, web site references, e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers. It very briefly describes what each B&B offers and when it is open or closed. What is lacking for my taste buds, compared to the "Spain volume", is the detailed descriptions provided by a pithy writing style descrbing the locale, the owners and of the cooking style that almost makes the roast kid aroma of a described culinary delight jump out of the pages. My wife misses photographs of the interiors of each B&B. To provide considerable detail for two establishments per page is an ambitious task and the editors carry it off. Not withstanding my "comparative disillusionment", the word descriptions do compensate for the missing photographs, directions to local eating places anticipate culinary delights and "How to get there information" makes it easy to locate a Special Place on a detailed Michelin map. Based on my personal experiences, the Spanish volume appears to be very reliable, I see no reason why the French B&B should not be equally so.
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