Rating: 
Summary: Well-written, quirky, and useful
Review: This well-written book was invaluable for our family's week in Bayou country. It has a dry humor ("on the Bayou, land is a recent occurrence..."). It covers geography, history, culture, and then gets into where to stay, where to eat, where to dance, what to see, and what to do. It's pretty up front (about one town -- "don't get hungry here...").Everything we tried that was recommended in the book was great fun. One of the eateries was not so much wonderful as wonderfully different, but we were glad we went just as well. Some of the details are a little out of date, but I think that's due to their specificity. If you say that a tiny bakery makes sweet potato pies between 11-3 on Thursdays, but the one owner-baker decides to change to Wednesdays, there's not much to be done about that. Even so, that only happened once in the entire week. We had this book and the Delorme LA map, and that was a perfect set of resources for us. We had a great time, and I'm confident it was due to this book in particular. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written, quirky, and useful
Review: This well-written book was invaluable for our family's week in Bayou country. It has a dry humor ("on the Bayou, land is a recent occurrence..."). It covers geography, history, culture, and then gets into where to stay, where to eat, where to dance, what to see, and what to do. It's pretty up front (about one town -- "don't get hungry here..."). Everything we tried that was recommended in the book was great fun. One of the eateries was not so much wonderful as wonderfully different, but we were glad we went just as well. Some of the details are a little out of date, but I think that's due to their specificity. If you say that a tiny bakery makes sweet potato pies between 11-3 on Thursdays, but the one owner-baker decides to change to Wednesdays, there's not much to be done about that. Even so, that only happened once in the entire week. We had this book and the Delorme LA map, and that was a perfect set of resources for us. We had a great time, and I'm confident it was due to this book in particular. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Unforgivably Bad Directions!
Review: We recently spent a week visiting Lafayette and the surrounding area in search of music and dancing, both Cajun and Zydeco. This book is the most helpful resource we could find anywhere. But we were disappointed to discover the hard way that some of the directions are impossible to follow. For instance, we drove out to Loreauville to search for Clifton Chenier's unmarked grave, and the book was just plain wrong. It told us to turn west on a road that only went east, giving us an impossible set of directions. We got lost, and spent an hour wandering rural backroads that had nothing at all to do with the highway numbers given in this book. On other trips, we learned the distances they give are sometimes way, way off, causing much confusion. The authors seem to be obsessed with food and eating, and know very little about the music and dance venues. Still, we couldn't have gotten along without it.
Rating:
Summary: The best of the 5 guidebooks we used
Review: We used several guidebooks to plan a long weekend in southern Louisiana in connection with a family wedding in Lafayette. This was the most useful of the books. The author gives a star to especially noteworthy attractions, hotels, and restaurants. We went by these stars to plan our trip and had a great time. Even our new Cajun cousins-in-law were impressed with the selections we made. A close second as a guidebook was "Louisiana Dayride - 52 Short Trips from New Orleans" by Shelley Holl. Two final notes: Neither guidebook covers the city of New Orleans itself; and every guidebook we read had the wrong area codes for many telephone numbers (Louisiana has 2 brand-new area codes -- 225 and 337)
Rating:
Summary: The best of the 5 guidebooks we used
Review: We used several guidebooks to plan a long weekend in southern Louisiana in connection with a family wedding in Lafayette. This was the most useful of the books. The author gives a star to especially noteworthy attractions, hotels, and restaurants. We went by these stars to plan our trip and had a great time. Even our new Cajun cousins-in-law were impressed with the selections we made. A close second as a guidebook was "Louisiana Dayride - 52 Short Trips from New Orleans" by Shelley Holl. Two final notes: Neither guidebook covers the city of New Orleans itself; and every guidebook we read had the wrong area codes for many telephone numbers (Louisiana has 2 brand-new area codes -- 225 and 337)
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