Michelin Green Guide Provence, 7e (Green Guide/Michelin)

Having just returned form a brief sojourn outside of Avignon(one of numerous visits over the years to the South of France) I found the Green Guide as indispensable as ever.

These oddly shaped, distinctive volumes dispel whatever remains of Peter Mayle's cute and condescending presentation of the region. Here instead is an ancient and noble land of sunlight and wind, which has created strangely shaped stones and mountains surrounding ancient olive groves,endless vineyards, wide rivers, and more Roman remains than can be found in Rome. The magical Middle Ages are here, too, as well as the quintessential visions of Cezanne, the native son, and Van Gogh, the wandering Dutchman. As your eyes do the looking, this highly useful green book will filll you in with all the information you will need on plants, stones (manbuilt and otherwise) weather,rivers, geology, and above all history.

What you see around you is explicated with an appropriate Gallic resserve, accuracy and precision, so...Read more

I have lived in France for over two years, and have traveled to over 50 places all over the country.

I have chosen the Provence Green Guide to review because it's my favorite region; though all of the guides are similar. I might also mention that I have not actually seen the English version of the Green Guide - I only use the French ones.

That being said, I have tried and looked at MANY guides of France. The Green Guide (or Guide Vert) is the best for FRANCE. For other countries this is not the case.

The maps are useful; the rating system is very, very useful (and pretty close in my opinion); and the sites they recommend are very good. There is also a recommended walking path for each city map - a sort of top place to walk around if you are rushed, during a train layover for example. The many photos of sites, buildings, and cities is nice; they are often a critical deciding factor in my travel choices. Though more often than not the photos...Read more

Though still filled with good information, if this book is any indication the Green Guides have been "dumbed down" and reorganized to the point of near un-usability. The older Green Guides were always my go-to guides for planning the itinerary of a trip. Sure I had to look elsewhere for hotels & restaurants, but I could always find readable maps and a well organized guide to the places I wanted to visit. This book is organized into what look like randomly created "zones" which make it nearly impossible to plan a coherent route or to quickly find a particular town or sight - instead of simply looking places up alphabetically, now you have to know which zone it's in and then try to find it, or to use the (not very good) index to find places. It remains to be seen whether this book will be useful once I'm on the ground in Provence, but I've given up trying to use it for planning. Thanks be to online used bookstores - I just ordered a used copy of the 1991 edition for $1 from...Read more