Help in buying Michelin maps
 

My husband is finally involved in the plannning of our 7 week trip to France. He wants me to ask you exactly what Michelin maps in what scale to buy now in planning. (I am happy he's involved) I would appreciate any help).

We are sure we are going to the following areas

Paris CDG to Giverney and Normandy area
Brittany
Loire
Dordogne
Provence (this is a maybe if we have time...can we buy there or should we get it now)


Re the scale of the map...we might need to bring magnifying glass, right?

Thanks for all your help..I am happy to say it's all taking shape.

For Paris get the little book Paris par Arrondisement.
For all the rest get the highly detailed maps specifically of those areas. I assume you are driving. Check Barnes and Noble. If they don't have them they can order them.

Yes, if you are driving, then the most detailed is needed. Saying this, you'll need many maps!
Also, make sure every town or city you plan to stay in is on your map. Especially in France where a town may look like it is the town you want, ie St.Leger, but you really want St. Leger sur L'heume. And watch for those round abouts. Sometimes the signs aren't aimed like you would want them; we've gone around roundabouts many times until we were sure the route we wanted was correct.
Have fun!

I don't think you would want to buy a bunch of regional maps. I would suggest the Michelin spiral bound atlas with a scale of 1:200,000. Much easier to use in a car than fold-out maps, and probably a lot cheaper.

loisco, I think you'll get a lot of different opinions on this, because there are trade-offs ... large scale maps will give you greater detail, but you'll need more of them.

Here's what I do: for pre-trip planning, I use a 2001 edition of Michelin's touring and motoring atlas for France. It's printed at a 1/200,000 scale, which most people find acceptable for driving. From my perspective, it's easy to read and blessedly indexed. Unfortunately, it is a large and heavy spiral-bound book. (Curious, I just weighed it; it is just under three pounds.)

With your planned itinerary (it looks like you'll be covering a lot of ground), an atlas might suit, but you'd have to decide whether you wanted to tote something that big around France.

The alternative is to buy individual Michelin maps for the areas you plan to tour. I think Michelin still publish the big yellow 1/200,000 area maps, which would serve. However, after planning from the atlas, I use the Michelin 3-series "Local" maps at 1/150,000 scale (1 cm to 1.5 km) when I'm actually in France. These are highly legible and provide exceptional detail. These, too, are indexed. Unfortuately, it takes 45 of them to cover France, so you'd need quite a few to cover your itinerary.

I have been able to buy all of my Michelin maps in travel-oriented bookstore in large Canadian cities, so I think you'd have no difficulty pre-purchasing them if you live in the US. I have also seen all these maps in tabacs and bookstores in Paris and the south of France.

Have a good trip.

Anselm

For each area, I would buy the largest-scale Michelin maps that you can buy. Without actually checking, I do remember that you might need two maps to cover all the areas of the Dordogne that you might be interested in seeing. For planning purposes, you might want to buy a map of the entire country of France.

I always buy any maps I need early on in my planning. I'm a visual person; I need to see how towns and other features are related to each other geographically. I also like Michelin's feature of outlining particularly scenic roads in green, so I look for that.

No, you probably won't need a magnifying glass. As the scale goes up (or is it down - I mean as the map covers less area per inch of map, so the smaller roads are included), the map covers less territory, so the words on the map end up being the same size, approximately, as a map that covers all of France (but includes less detail).

For Paris, try <i>Le petit parisien- trois Plans par arrondissement</i>, which contains a street plan, and metro map and a bus map for each arrondissement. It also gives market days and location, post office stations, museums etc.

I also am in favor the the Michelin Atlas which can stay at the bottom of a suitcase until you get your car, at which point the wieght and bulk becomes insignificant. The one big advantage is that if you read about things to see in various articles, you can simply take a Post-il and place it on the relevant page so that when you look at that page, you know that there might be something you might want to detour. For example, a couple of years ago I read a N.Y.Times article about Romanesque churches in the Poitou-Charente area. I used Post-its to idendify the towns on the map and last summer came across them on my drive from Bordeaux to Cognac. Without the Post-it the reference would have been forgotten in some folder where the original article was stored.

are you driving. if so there is a michelin driving map book of all of europe that we use all of the time. it is about 12&quot;w x 15&quot; tall and very flat for packing. as for maps of cities we use a combination of the dk books and the streetwise maps.

For anyone with a laptop computer, the choice is obvious:

o Microsoft Streets &amp; Trips with GPS Locator - $129 MSRP (I got mine for $60) Free demo at <b>https://streaming.endeavors.com/microsoft/streets/index.html</b>

o Microsoft AutoRoute - map data for 13 European countries

You plug the GPS into a USB port. The map shows where you are, which way you're pointed, and how fast you're going. You can zoom in and out to any scale that suits you.

I've used Pocket Streets with a GPS, and I love it. (I only got the free maps of towns, so I haven't used it between cities. But I have used MS&amp;T on the road in the States, and it works perfectly.)

p.s. You don't have to buy the GPS if all you want is a mapping tool. Just get the Autoroute and you're covered.

In addition to the big spiral bound Michelin Road Atlas, on our driving trips we also carry a pocket version [&quot;Guide Routier&quot;] that I picked up at a rest stop some time back. Mappy.com is useful for route planning and directions.

If you choose to buy the Michelin regional maps for the Loire you'd probably need two: #518 (Pays de Loire) and #519 (Centre). Both are on the 1/200,000 scale. You could probably get away with just buying #518.

A better option might be either the spiral bound map for the entire country or the #721 (folding) which is on a 1/100,000 scale.

You should pick up a copy of the large-scale map of Provence before you get to Provence; local maps are usually the first to sell out. The Normandy map covers Giverny, and there is a separate one for Brittany and the Loire Valley. I like to have a complete map to work with and only use the smaller-scale maps if necessary. But buying the Michelin atlas once you're in France is a very good idea.

I have found maps of areas of France in a scale of 1/200,000. Do they make them 1/100,000? Does anyone know of a US store or internet site where I can purchase Michelin maps and the spiral bound maps referred to above?

Maptown has the 1/200,000

http://www.maptown.com/michelin-france-regional.html

Get the spiral bound Michelin Atlas. When someone mentions on this forum or elsewhere a town or sight that might interest you, make a note of it on a Post-it and put it on the relevant page in the Atlas. Then as you drive in France, you will come across that reference when you open the page and you might decide to take the detour. You can also reference locations that intrigued you because of pictures that you have seen.

Hi Ronda,

You can get all of the regional Michelin maps at
http://www.languagequest.com/travele...map_select.htm

The best maps for the Dordogne are 329 and 337 (1/150,000)

Thanks, Ira, that is a great site.

Michael, I found a spiral bound Michelin map of France at the following site. It is at the very bottomof the page. Is this the one you are referring to:

http://www.frencheuropean.com/Travel...s%20France.htm

I can't read what scale it is. Do you know?

Ronda, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I have a 2001 copy of that &quot;spiral road atlas&quot; and it's 1/200,000 scale. Unless it has been completely redesigned (and printed with a lot more pages), I suspect the most current edition is still that scale.

If you want a larger scale, I think you're going to have to look at the 3-series maps. As Ira mentioned, they're 1/150,000 scale.

Anselm

Ronda:

You can probably save yourself some time and money by waiting until youget to France to buy both the individual maps and the atlas. They're readilyu available at bookstores, even at supermarkets. They cost less there, and the more unusual ones (like the Dordogne) are easier to find. Just a thought.

You can buy the spiral Michelin atlas at Barnes &amp; Noble or order it from B&amp;N or Amazon. I would suggest getting it before you go so that you can get familiar with it. It takes a while to get used to using it. But it is great. Actually, the newer ones are no longer spirals, but bound. They are somewhat smaller, but thicker. It is so much nicer to use in the car instead of trying to open up a large folding map. We have used one for several years and wouldn't go without it. However, I would also suggest getting a foldout map to use in planning your trip. I like to get a map of the area - such as Provence - so we can map out our planned itinerary. Also, use michelin.com and mappy.com to get routes from one place to another with detailed driving instructions. I print them out and take along. Can't have too many maps!!!

We originally had the bound Atlas instead of the spiral one. I do not recommend it. It falls apart very easily. I believe that the Atlas comes in two different sizes. I prefer the larger one, with greater detail. Test: the Atlas should contain the Dordogne town of St. Amand de Coly. More detail is unnecessary, less detail might make finding out-of-the-way suggestions difficult.

I just came back from a travel bookstore. The two versions of the Michelin Road Atlas are the same in terms of detail. The one with a more compact surface is easier to handle, it is more like a book, but on the other hand, each page represents about half of what is presented on the page of the larger version.

Thank you all for the great info!