Eyewitness Travel Guide to Paris (revised)

Rating:
Summary: An excellent guide book!
Review: I just returned from a trip to Paris and my husband and I loved this book. It is divided by areas of Paris which makes it very easy to use. While we were in Paris, we saw about 15 other groups carrying this book around, too!

Rating:
Summary: best guidebook I have ever seen
Review: I think this is the most easy to use and also the most beautiful guidebook to Paris. It was a real pleasure to use, and helped me to find the best places to see during my visit.

Rating:
Summary: It was superb! The best travel guide !!!
Review: I have traveled all over the world, this was truly wonderful

Rating:
Summary: Invaluable asset and easy to pop into your pocket.
Review: I have found this small book to be packed with easily accessible and easily understandable facts, figures and maps.So good in fact, that I also bought the Eyewitness guide to London and last week in Athens I was delighted to find an Eyewitness guide to Greece, Athens and the Mainland. I needed a map of the city of Athens and looked for one in the kiosk of the Grande Bretagne Hotel in the centre of Athens. You can imagine my delight and pleasure in finding one of my favourite 'Eyewitness Guides'. You may also imagine my horror and displeasure at being charged 10,000 drachmas--£20.00--(Yes, that IS right -I double checked) I had to drop the guide book like a hot potato saying that I'd wait until I went home where I could buy it for half that price! Disappointing that the Greeks think that they can fleece tourists in such a fashion. Beware, and be wiser than me--get your guide books BEFORE you go away!!

Rating:
Summary: One of the Worst -- Inaccurate and Limited Information
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Most noticed travel guide in Paris
Review: Excellent guide to city-between narrative and pictures. Most popular travel book noted on streets. Would prefer more walking tours.

Rating:
Summary: Tres bien!
Review: This is a great series with beautiful illustrations unmatched by the other guides. Gives practical information about the most romantic city in the entire world. Out of the multitude of travel guides available for Paris, this is the most useful. In fact, this whole series is quite good. Bring this as your one guide to Paris or good to read in your own living room if you can't make it over there.

Rating:
Summary: This book didn't help us navigate Paris at all
Review: I purchased this book because of all the rave reviews, and after the experience of trying to navigate Paris with it, felt I owed it to future travelers to give my input. This book was fine to read on the plane trip over, and the plane trip back, but if you are looking for a book to guide you through Paris pick up a different guidebook. The pictures were nice, but messy. The maps were awful. Cross referencing with other books was impossible.

Rating:
Summary: All you need to see and get around Paris.
Review: My wife and I just returned from 17 days in Paris and this was the only book we needed. This book is packed with information that is useful and easy to find. The street and train maps are great, the tips are useful and the pictures are wonderful. We carried two other books to Paris with us, but once there, we left those in our room and bought this book. If you are gong to Paris, get this book.

Rating:
Summary: If you know NOTHING about Paris, this guide is okay.
Review: This guide seems to be designed for the traveller who knows nothing about Paris. If you already know that in Paris you will eat croissants, see Notre Dame, and use French Francs, much of this guide will be useless to you. And though the book is full of pictures, they are so busy that they overwhelm the important information. Further, the book is divided into "quarters," which do not necessarily correspond to the Parisian arondissements; this makes cross-referencing between this book and any other nearly impossible.