Your Favorite Paris Guidebook
 

We will soon be in Paris for five days, and we would appreciate your suggestion for a good Paris guidebook to use while we are there.

Have you ever been to Paris before? Do you like museums or are you planning to hit the haute cuisine restaurants?
I think the best guide book is one that mirrors your idea of the perfect trip.
That said. I have a fondness for the Rick Steve's series of books. For an introduction to any country, he manages to highlight the most commonly "must see" lists for most of Europe. You will never get to experience the heart and soul of a country that way but you will have visited the places that all the tours hit. And maybe it will tempt your couriosity and make you itch to see more of the off-the-beaten path places.

Michelin green guide.

We will be in Paris after three weeks in Italy. I have Rick Steves France guide from several years ago and an old Green Guide. I was just fishing to see if somebody suggests a guidebook that we might otherwise overlook.

We had been to France once before, and went again this summer. I had the usual guidebooks, but two that I really liked were the Access Paris, and then believe it or not, Paris for Dummies.

Any more suggestions?

I like the Michelin Green Guides for depth, and to carry around in your purse,
the much smaller Eyewitness Top Ten Paris.

It's very user friendly, and has handy metro and street maps attached.

Have fun!

I like the Eyewitness guides but some of them can be heavy to tote around. But they do have detailed maps and highlighted areas of historical monuments.

Hi, happy trailstoyou (and to you, too :-) You asked on your London thread about guidebooks and I will reiterate that Rick Steves' guidebooks for cities (in this case, Paris)is great, especially for your short stay. Again, research here and on the Internet for in-depth info for specific sites.

I mentioned on your London thread that the Streetwise Paris map was my bible. It shows all the metro stops and covers all of "main" Paris and labels the highlights of the city. I only used my Michelin map when I went a bit outside of "main" Paris.

For a book to carry with you during your day, we really liked the Access Paris book. It's organized by area, so if, for example, you're at a museum and want to find neighboring shops or restaurants,or hotels, they're all grouped together. The print is small (but not hard to read) so there's tons of info on each page and we found the comments were pretty spot on. Whenever we go to a major city we check to see if there's an Access version. The Access Paris is by Richard Saul Wurman. We highly recommend it.

We also have the Eyewitness books on Paris and France, which are good for planning and beautifully illustrated with stunning photos and drawings, but they're heavier and not practical to take with if you're packing light.

For a five day visit, the Eyewitness "Top Ten Paris" is slimmer but very comprehensive.

Also highly recommend the Access guide.

I like the Frommer's Paris from $95 a day. I also took an old Rick Steve's (2004) I'd picked up in a used book store. I wound up using it a lot for the walking tours. I especially liked the Historic Paris Walk. I think it'd be worth your while to take along the old Rick Steves you have. For the walking tours, it really doesn't matter if it's old.

If you're looking for info in addition to the main must-see sites, we like <i>Avant Guide Paris</i>. (As an aside, check out the flip-book animation in the lower corner. :) ) The last I looked, it hadn't been updated in a few years; however even restaurants and clubs don't change over that quickly in Paris, so a lot of the information is still relevant. We got ours at one of the major bookstore chains: B&amp;N or Borders, I don't remember which.

I also always like the Michelin <i>Green Guides</i> for siteseeing info. My maps of preference are in the little <i>Paris par Arrondisement</i> book - but that's probably because I've owned one for a long time, not because it's necessarily the best LOL.

Thanks or the suggestions and informative discussions.