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 This book was a great help when we took our three children to Paris for seven days. The museum tours were informative & the perfect length for our family. We also closely followed his tips as to when to arrive at the various attractions. We had a wonderful trip.We would not consider going to Europe without a Rick Steves book.
By limiting this guidebook to just Paris and the immediately surrounding area, Rick has the space to expand information on sights, and he makes the most of it. Sight information is reasonably in depth, to the point and often covers fascinating details omitted by others. A notable strong point is how historical information is integrated into the text rather than relegated to separate (and often little read) section. This book maintains the breezy but pithy style for which the Steves guidebooks are justly famous. Travel details provided (cost, opening and closing times, directions, nearby places to eat, etc.) are almost always spot on. When your family is hungry and crabby at the Louvre, it is comforting to to be able to open the guidebook and find there is good food court just up the stairs from the entrance to the lower level of the pyramid. Usually I use several guidebooks since each excels in a slightly different area, but there is no question that this one does it all and does it with style. This is definitely the one to buy.
Beware. Rick has a cult following. If you stay at the Leveque or eat at one of his restaurant recommendations, prepare to be surrounded by Rick Steves groupies. But, buy this book and save yourself time, money and effort around Paris. |
I say just about perfect because a few additions would make this the only guidebook you will ever need for Paris. As a recently relocated American expat in London, my wife and I just took our first weekend trip to Paris (by train) with this book and the Fodor's Gold guide. If you like to walk, the walking tours are superb, Rick Steve's commentary, history, directions, anecdotes, and humor are all excellent. His guided tours of museums, churches, and other sites are all very interesting. The book also includes short trips outside the city, such as Versailles. I anticipate using this book many more times (you can only see so much in a weekend), and to make it perfect I would implore the editors to add a Paris Metro/RER map and a proper map of the city (the only maps in this edition are localized hand-drawn maps for each walk, making it difficult to guage the overall scale of the city and where things are located in relation to each other). These were the only two things that were invaluable in the Fodor's guide. Certainly it's easy enough to pick those up in the city, but I have always found it more convenient to study maps ahead of time, and have them all in one place. Overall, however, this is the one guidebook to Paris that no visitor to the city should be without.
You definitely can not take just this book with you to Paris. After reading it and then the Frommer's Paris guidebook, I regret the money I wasted buying this. The pros to this book are that it is thin and therefore portable, and it has excellent Museum and tours and self-guided walks. The cons to this book are that it has few restaurant and accomodation listings(hence the thinness), and often the listings don't actually have the written down addresses, just walking directions from the Mętro. Why spend more money buying this guide and the others you'll need when you can just buy one? Try buying the Frommer's or Fodor's instead.
