In his amiable, informed, and ruthlessly candid way, Steves focuses on the best--including nice places to stay and eat that give lots in the way of character and take relatively little in the way of francs. He suggests walking tours, museums, and itineraries that include both famous landmarks and little-known finds. He knows it all: art galleries and crepe stands, street cafes and romantic neighborhoods, activities for kids, and great places to shop. Most importantly, he knows how Parisians live, and his guide provides the best information to let you experience not just the sights of Paris, but Parisian life as well. --Stephanie Gold

Book Description
Rick Steves doesn't just list where to travel in Europe, he leads travelers through the "Back Door," and reveals how to give every journey an extra, more authentic dimension. He shows travelers how to delve into European culture, make friends with the locals, and experience each region's natural wonders -- economically and hassle free. Rick Steves' Paris 2003 includes the best sights and activities, friendly places to eat and sleep -- heavy on character, light on the budget, suggested day plans and itineraries mixing famous sights with little-known discoveries, shopping and entertainment secrets, and special tips for exploring with kids. You'll also find details on day trips and self-guided city walks along the Champs-Elysees and through the Marais, and museum tours as well. "It's Rick Steves again, that one-man Euro-dynamo." -- Chicago Tribune

What makes Steves' guides so useful is that he addresses himself to Americans who are not used to foreign travel with the principal goal of eliminating their fear by helping to get their feet wet. To this end, his guides are more PRESCRIPTIVE than DESCRIPTIVE.

For a good DESCRIPTIVE guide, I would turn to another guide such as Lonely Planet or Rough Guide, supplemented, perhaps, by Rachel Kaplan's excellent "Little-Known Museums In and Around Paris."

A PRESCRIPTIVE guide like this will urge that you avoid the Madeleine, Opera Garnier, and Pantheon because they aren't worth it -- and don't bother with the Bastille, because it was torn down over 200 years ago. Steves concentrates on accommodations and restaurants in only three parts of Paris: Rue Cler (near the Eiffel Tower), the Marais, and the Rue Mouffetard area. That saves perhaps a hundred pages and makes the book more compact and easy to carry during a trip.

One of the strong points of the book is the merging of material from Steves' useful "Mona Winks" art guide into his Paris book. "Mona Winks" shows how you can visit the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the Cluny Museum (highly recommended), and Versailles without killing yourself. For the Louvre, as an example, he concentrates how you can devote your attention to parts of the Sully and Denon wings and see the key works in about 2-3 hours. (Okay, if you're a purist, don't flame me: You and I would, of course, devote more time -- but that's not the issue here.)

For the most complete info on Paris, I would suggest you supplement Steves with two fantastic Internet resources: the postings on the rec.travel.europe newsgroup (especially by JACK), and the website of the RATP (which runs the Metro and buses in Paris) at http://www.ratp.fr


Just about the perfect guidebook for Paris   November 19, 1999
 141 out of 147 found this review helpful

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're going to LOVE FRANCE!   September 23, 2004
 88 out of 107 found this review helpful

I've made >20 visits to France all together. Here are my reviews of the best guides....to meet you r exact needs.....I hope these are helpful and that you have a great visit! I always gauge the quality of my visit by how much I remember a year later......this review is designed to help you get the guide that will be sure YOU remember your trip many years into the future. Travel Safe and enjoy yourself to the max!

Rick Steves' books are not recommended. They may be an interesting read but their helpfulness is very poor. They don't do well on updates, transportation details, or anything but the first-time-tourist routine and even that is somewhat superficial on anything but the mega-major sites.

Michelin
Famous for their quality reviews, the Red Michelin Guides are for hotels & Restaurants, the Green Michelin Guides are for main tourist destinations. However, the English language Green guide is the one most people use and it has now been supplemented with hotel and restaurant information. These are the serious review guides as the famous Michelin ratings are issued via these books.

Fodor's
Fodor's is the best selling guide among Americans. They have a bewildering array of different guides. Here's which is what:
The Gold Guide is the main book with good reviews of everything and lots of tours, walks, and just about everything else you could think of. It's not called the Gold guide for nothing though....it assumes you have money and are willing to spend it.
SeeIt! is a concise guide that extracts the most popular items from the Gold Guide
PocketGuide is designed for a quick first visit
UpCLOSE for independent travel that is cheap and well thought out
CityPack is a plastic pocket map with some guide information
Exploring is for cultural interests, lots of photos and designed to supplement the Gold guide

MapGuide
MapGuide is very easy to use and has the best location information for hotels, tourist attractions, museums, churches etc. that they manage to keep fairly up to date. It's great for teaching you how to use the Metro. The text sections are quick overviews, not reviews, but the strong suite here is brevity, not depth. I strongly recommend this for your first few times learning your way around the classic tourist sites and experiences. MapGuide is excellent as long as you are staying pretty much in the center of the city.

Time Out
The Time Out guides are very good. Easy reading, short reviews of restaurants, hotels, and other sites, with good public transport maps that go beyond the city centre. Many people who buy more than one guidebook end up liking this one best!

Blue Guides
Without doubt, the best of the walks guides.... the Blue Guide has been around since 1918 and has extremely well designed walks with lots of unique little side stops to hit on just about any interest you have. If you want to pick up the feel of the city, this is the best book to do that for you. This is one that you end up packing on your 10th trip, by which time it is well worn.

Let's Go
Let's Go is a great guide series that specializes in the niche interest details that turn a trip into a great and memorable experience. Started by and for college students, these guides are famous for the details provided by people who used the book the previous year. They continue to focus on providing a great experience inexpensively. If you want to know about the top restaurants, this is not for you (use Fodor's or Michelin). Let's Go does have a bewildering array of different guides though. Here's which is what:
Budget Guide is the main guide with incredibly detailed information and reviews on everything you can think of.
City Guide is just as intense but restricted to the single city.
PocketGuide is even smaller and features condensed information
MapGuide's are very good maps with public transportation and some other information (like museum hours, etc.)

Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet has City and Out To Eat Guides. They are all about the experience so they focus on doing, being, getting there, and this means they have the best detailed information, including both inexpensive and really spectacular restaurants and hotels, out-of-the-way places, weird things to see and do, the list is endless.

Frommer's
These are time tested guides that pride themselves on being updated annually. Although I think the guides below provide information that is in more depth or more concise (depending on what the guide is known for), if your main concern is that the guide has very little old or outdated information, then this would be a good guide for you.




excellent guide for first trip- with these caveats   June 8, 2001
 55 out of 59 found this review helpful



Well I just came back from Paris where the only book I took along was Rick Steves' Paris 2001, supplemented with a "Paris Pratique" map bought in a Paris bookstore (get the book, not the fold out map) and of course a subway map.

For the first time visitor (and I was), this book covers the basics you need for budget trip. For a few days I was guarding the book more than my wallet, I was so dependent upon it-- it allowed me to see the highlights of the museums and sights without spending overly large amounts of time or precious physical energy. Of special help were the hints on how to avoid lines in the hot sun at the museums.

The great joy of this book is it cuts monstrous sites like the Louvre down to manageable size. This convenience comes at a cost: the book reflects Rick Steves' tastes in art and food, which may not be your own. But for a first timer like me it was great. After a few days, I started to explore on my own.

If the book has any faults, I would say that its recommended itineraries and guided tours focus too much on cathedrals and museums. Also, Rick fails to do with restaurants what he does so well with the sights, i.e., guide you toward a limited number of recommended/rated selections. He does recommend some places, but the "walk" maps generally don't include any of these recommended eating/drinking places, they are listed separately in the "eating" section of the book, making cross-referencing difficult. For gastronomic adventure beyond Rick's diet of croissants and cheese sandwiches, you need another book. You might try "Cheap Eats in Paris." Note, there is an excellent vegetarian restaurant at 72 Rue Lemoine.

If you follow this book you will see more Americans than Parisians. Also, in every museum some of the recommended exhibits had been moved, and Rick neglected to mention "Pentecost" holiday. But these are minor objections.

Overall, while I would have prioritized some of the sights differently (see below), the book was a great guide and time saver, superior to the others I looked at, and in most cases it was faster and more concise (and had better interior maps) than the audio tours and maps available at sights. I highly recommend it. Other reviews complain about the book's street maps, but I had no problem- maybe that's because I had a mini street map with me. I was never lost.

Note, missing from the book entirely are:

Warnings about how difficult it is to navigate the Orsay museum (what a mess-- everyone walking around lost),

Day trips to Normandy Beaches (note, to truly see the D Day sites takes a few days at least)

Opera Guarnier ( don't know why everyone poo-poos this as a tourist site, it had a lot of people there, it is extremely well maintained [this was how Versailles must have looked in its heyday], and once you see that and the Sewer tour you have a new appreciation of the Phantom of the Opera).

Also missing from this and every other guidebook: Sites where scenes from favorite movies (American in Paris, Charade, etc.) were shot- finding these locations was a fabulous, cheap, and relatively tourist free part of the trip.

A few opinions different from the book:

Versailles was mildly interesting, historically important, but in my opinion overrated.

I would downgrade these sites to one star each or less:

Deportation Memorial (this is the one place in Paris where I felt truly unwelcome. It's not really a tourist site-- if you don't have a personal connection to it I would recommend avoiding it. It is closed 12-2, and worst of all there was a very (even for France) testy guard blowing whistles and yelling at people for not being respectful enough. The exit I took had a long flight of stairs ending at a locked gate, I had to go around and climb another flight . . . ugh)

Napoleon Crypt and WWII Museum (Yawn)

Conciergerie (essentially, a large basement)

Rick's Champs Elysees Walk (Just like any big street downtown city street in America)-- stick to the small neighborhoods.

And bring a good pair of walking shoes!


He may be smart....   January 27, 2001
 48 out of 57 found this review helpful

I got this book because I was going to be in Paris alone for 3 days. I usually use Michelin books - it is like having your own personal tour guide and local encyclopedia. However, the set-up of the Steves book was appealing for this particular trip because of time and budget restrictions and because it also had accommodation information, which the Michelin does not include in its Green Guide. The positive aspects of the book are that it is set up to help the reader prioritize for 1,2,3, and 7 day trips. Very helpful. Most of his sightseeing suggestions (particularly the Orsay) are also good. Finally, his hotel suggestions were right on.

HOWEVER, the book is littered with his own little sardonic witticisms, frequently in the place of real information. For instance, he suggests that the peasants killed Marie Antoinette because they were offended by her taste in wallpaper. This is amusing, certainly, but this sort of BS really ought not to take the place of the real, and interesting stories. Perhaps he thinks he's so funny that he's more interesting than the French Revolution? IN ADDITION, his goofy little hand-drawn maps, while they lend the book that cute coffee-shop napkin flavor, rarely resemble anything identifiable in 3D, and are extremely unhelpful when attempting to negotiate the twists and turns of the older parts of a city. Thus necessitating the purchase of a real map, which one must unfold like a large spaghetti-patterned flag of tourism ('PLEASE rob me') .

When it comes to guidebooks, I am certain that it is really a matter of different strokes for different folks. If you are interested in travelling cheap and experiencing the ultimate in cafeteria and youth hotels, Lonely Planet is great. If you are interested in the real history and culture, the Michelin Green Guide is your book. For the safest, most comfortable, least-frazzling (most expensive) travel, you go with Fodor's. If you want to have better pictures in your guidebook than you will ever take with your own camera you must have Eyewitness. And if you want a snide, sarcastic., if knowledgeable paper companion sharing its opinion with you every step of your trip, you definitely invest in Mr. Steves.