Rating: 
Summary: Eyewitness Guide to Paris: A+++
Review: I just got back from Paris, and this was the BEST travel book I'd seen. It's perfect and covers EVERYTHING you need to know. It's like having your own personal tour guide right there with you!!
Rating:
Summary: Great resource for planning and en route
Review: I have had great experiences with the DK Guides. I use it exstensively in my trip planning and this is the guide I take on the trip.This guide provides execllent information about local sites throughout Beligium. It gives very clear guidance concerning what you can find and access information. It also helps you to locate the sites with indexed maps and diagrams. I have found that this and the other DK Guides are bit weak in providing guidance about what to see. That is, it offers little qualitative information--everything sounds equally wonderful. And we all know this is not necessarily the case. So I always find another guide that has more opinions and recomended walking tours and the like to determine what to see. This has worked out well for the most part. I use other guides to plan the trip and the DK Guide in the country. It has very usable maps although sometimes too limited in scope and you may require a local map to get around beyond the central city. Also, because the book is a bit heavy and too large to fit in a jacket pocket after the first day or so I leave it in the hotel and rely on the local map when walking about. The one topic I find most reliable is DK's restaurant recommendations. The two places I tried in Paris were fantastic and offered everything that the guide described. I have had equal success with DK's restaurant recommendations in other cities/countries. I think this is an indispensible travel guide as long as you know what you are using it for--planning or background info, etc.
Rating:
Summary: Great Travel Guide, Beautiful Coffee Table Book!
Review: .
Summary:
Every Dorling Kindersley Guide has been a great and interesting book... and delightful to have and use, even if you are not traveling to that location, but are only interested in learning more! The Guides are well organized in a logical and easy to follow manner. They are beautifully illustrated, well developed with accurate information (it is unusual for hotel and restaurant information to be that accurate), have enough history to help the reader understand the people and cultural background, and have a lot of useful travel information and useable maps in the appendixes. The really great attraction to this book is several fold; it is:
............Very complete
............Easy to read
............Beautifully and artistically completed
............Good shopping, safety and other tips
............Gorgeous photographs too numerous to list. Guide Specifics:
The guides are organized as follows: How to use this guide
Introduction to Historical and Geographical information
Geographical Regions
............Introduction Paris
........................Map
........................History
........................At a Glance
........................Through the Year
............Paris Area by Area, each including:
........................Introduction to street by street area
........................Detailed pictorials of area buildings
........................Architectural drawings, pictures, cut-aways of buildings ........................Specific stops, historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc. Travelers Needs - includes full list with rankings and notes
............Hotels
............Restaurants
............Shops / Markets
............Entertainment
............Paris for children Survival Information
............Practical
........................Tourist info., Etiquete, Personal Security and Health
........................Currencies, Telephones, misc info.
............Getting to Paris
........................Planes, trains and automobiles, signs
........................General map, sectional maps with index
............Getting to / around Paris
........................Maps, tours, currency, etc.
............General Index
............Phrase Book Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing Paris", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and Paris thought the Year - including events, etc. Areas with an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of specific blocks, or forums, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc. Architectural reviews include various views, and cutaways; given greater understanding and better perspective. They are all attractive, if not works of art - honestly. The travelers' Info. offers good and valid info. on prices, currencies, customs, important words, etc. I used the reviews on hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, etc. and found they were useful and accurate, and helpful with my touring and site decisions The books are so well thought-out that it has multiple maps, with various lookup tables, and the book's flaps are designed to be used as bookmarks for map pages. Conclusion:
Each book in this series is a great help, and beautiful collectible resource. As the President, CEO of an International Meeting Planning Corporation we have many resources and techniques to learn about places we have meetings / groups at as well as the cities and sights. But, as a traveler, this book really is top notch and I would recommend it to anyone going on a personal trip, or wanting to learn about a city, or location. We have used some of these books to augment our research to investigate cities for our groups.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful format for a guide book
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Could not get it out my neice's hands
Review: When we ordered our airline tickets, I sent this book to my 12-year-old neice and the "10-best" version to her 14-year-old bro. She brought the book on our trip and they both read it every day. They both had lists of things they wanted to see (but "No museums!"). Neice: Eiffel Tower and Jardin du Luxembourg. Nephew: Notre Dame, Pantheon, Catacombes. It was the second most gratifying thing about the trip (No. 1: neice writing her journal entries on the plane going home. Which she later read to her class). But next time I will order three copies: for neice, nephew and uncle.
Rating:
Summary: Great guide to Paris
Review: I recommend traveling with a DK guide and a Fodors' guide to all destinations. The combination of these two will serve you quite well.
Rating:
Summary: don't leave home without it
Review: I bought 5 different guide books before our trip to Paris. This was by far the best of the bunch. The maps are awesome. This guide also packs in alot of sights that were absent from other guides. I highly recommend this book. Don't miss St. Chapelle!
Rating: 
Summary: Made my life easier!
Review: This book was a big help to me and my husband in getting around Paris. First, the "MUST SEE" guide helped us maximized our 5 days trip to Paris. I was not familiar with the train system but the Metro map was accurate and drawn well. Second, the admission information about the museums and sights were all correct! But best of all, I wouldn't be able to understand all the things that I have seen without its help because mostly are in French!!! Thank goodness for this book bec. it saved me bucks and time bec. we don't have to join a tour group. Also, I've seen several people using this book. I highly recommend it!!!
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have for a Tourist Trip to Paris
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: One of Many Users
Review: With aplogies to Amazon, I must admit that I bought this book at Costco for a very competive price. We were in Paris for six days in June and the book was with us all the time. It was interesting to see that at least half of those who looked like tourists were also carrying the book, and in other languages than English. We too enjoyed the 90-minute walks, although, of course, you are guaranteed to walk with other tourists. We are returning to Paris for 8 days in October. We salivate when we open the book during planning sessions.
| 
