Fodor's Paris 2010 (Full-Color Gold Guides)

Comment: We took a trip to Paris this summer so I actually got to use this wonderful guide. The Fodor's Paris 2010 is a very handy book to have. It gave us great insight into the things we needed to do in the short time we had. The information about the Louvre, Eiffel Tower etc. was all very accurate. It gave us accurate timings, ticket prices and also things we needed to look out in the Louvre. The pictures are great and the book has glossy and high quality pictures. I also loved the map inside the book. If you have a trip planned to this beautiful city, I would certainly recommend this book.

Comment: I suppose it's my own fault for going into this book with the wrong expectations and this certainly isn't my first experience with these kinds of travel guides so I should have known better. I've never been to Paris and won't be going anytime soon but it is on my short list of places to go in the next few years and I was hoping to get a feel for what I might expect. The problem is that these kinds of books are really only good for someone who is either at the destination or going soon. Most of the book is devoted to an exhaustive listing of places to eat, places to shop and places to stay. Quite valuable if you're literally in Paris or planning your immanent vacation but otherwise it's just completely boring.

What I wanted was kind of a feel for what a Parisian vacation might be like. Based on this book the city is about 50% museums. I was kinda feeling the Paris vibe early on in the book seeing pictures of the park and describing the things to see in and around the Eiffel Tower, the river Seine and tips on avoiding long lines to get into the Louvre. I imagined the fun if sitting in a Parisian bar listening to jazz or enjoying a baguette at a street side café in the afternoon. I wasn't that interested in the long section on shopping in Paris and once it reached the chapters that listed and gave short paragraphs on all the restaurants, shops and hotels in Paris I just zoned out. I can't really vouch for the accuracy of the book since as I said I've never been there.

If you've not in Paris or planning a vacation to Paris this book is mostly a waste of money and you'd be better off just getting a book on Paris. That is not a knock against the book since by in large it does what a travel book is supposed to do and it does contain some nice photography.

Comment: In today's age of GPS enabled phones and internet connected portable devices, you can not help but wonder the purpose of paperback city guide. I mean what information could there be that you can not Google for free that this guide will provide you? As it turns out, it's not always about data. It's about arranging that data such that it provides some useful information and that is where this book shines. This book lists a lot of touristy places in Paris from restaurants to museums to hotels to shopping. Everything has been categorized and arranged into lists that are very easy to find. Every section starts with a small write-up about the history of that particular place or what makes that particular place famous/different/unique. It also rates restaurants/bars based on their food/service and also categorize them into $/$$/$$$ which can be very helpful. It does provide a lot of maps for various parts of the city but does not have a schedule for the local public transportation. Also, a few basic french expression would have been nice but I guess I'm being too harsh on this book now. So to sum things up, like I mentioned before... if you carry a smart phone, I see no need to carry this guide or any other paperback guide for that matter. But when your phone's battery runs out, then this will be a very good back-up plan.

Comment: We had a Fodors Paris guidebook that we purchased for a trip in 2004. We hesitated to buy another one because we didn't figure enough had changed to make it worth it. But I saw this and went ahead, and I'm glad I did. There was significant information that had changed over the past 6 years even in reference to listings that were in both books, not just new listings. We used this a lot to plan our activities and find our way around while in Paris this summer.

The best guidebooks for tourists who will be somewhere for less than a week are the DK Top 10 series, in my opinion. But if staying longer than a week, add the Fodors to your collection. It's worth having both.

Comment: I was delighted and pleasantly surprised to find that this Fodor's Guide to Paris was a vast improvement over the old, drab, gray guides of Fodor's past. We had stopped purchasing Fodor guides some years ago because we found them so lacking in opinion, with few pictures and very boring text that recommended hotels and restaurants that were dull and often expensive. We were much more taken with the Insight guides, as well as the Rick Steves and Lonely Planet books. This guide avoids the extremism of the latter two formats and adds great photos and super-useful guides to such major sites as the Louvre. The writing is lively and detailed, with many suggestions about out-of-the way treasures. One of our touchstones of whether a guidebook is any good is whether it mentions an area we lived in on one trip, the Sebastopol area and in particular the Rue Montorgueil, a vibrant, exciting shopping market near Les Halles and convenient to the Metro, that most guides ignore. While this guide doesn't review the area in detail, it does provide some guidance to the neighborhood. I'm sold again on Fodor's, and will definitely use this guide to help plan our next trip to Paris.