Frommer's Paris 2007

I have been using the Lonely Plant guide books in my last few years of traveling. I bought Frommer's for a change, just to see what other guide books have to offer. I was completely disappointed. Here is why.

- Terrible maps
1) The maps are scant in details: it does not have a lot of the smaller rues (streets) in Paris and the small and winding rues on the left bank are (in)famous. Consequently, you will frequently be unable to figure out where you are or where you are going to as there is no cross road as a reference point.

2) The fold-out map only include the areas closest to the Sein on the left and the right bank. If you want to find out about the other Arrondisements, good luck. For example, the 14e and 15e are almost entirely missed out.

3) The major landmarks are not clearly marked on the map. I believe most of us would love to have some graphical representation (icon) of the major attractions on the map. It makes it easy to figure out a lot of things, i.e. how much area are you covering, where you are relative to the Louvre, etc. The fold-out maps chose to use words, instead of icons, to tell you where the major attractions are. You have to read, among the street names, the arrondisement names etc. to find the attractions - a waste of time.

4) There are SEPARATE maps for attractions, restaurants, markets and metro/RER stations etc. It is very time consuming to figure out where to eat after seeing the attractions. I understand that it may be too much details on one map with all this information. But with Frommer's maps with scant details, I don't see why this cannot be done. By the way, the Lonely Planet guides seem to be able to do this very well, and with more details.

5) There is not enough map. There should be a detailed map for each of the major arrondissement. For example, the book mentions that one should take a walk in Montparnasse. But where is the map?? How do I get there??

After 2 days of frustration with the Frommer's maps, I got a free map from my hotel. Everything was clearly marked, including the smaller and more ambiguous rues that even the locals had trouble finding. And it was completely free!

- Illogical Organization
1) After the book mentions about a place, it does not tell you where it is marked on the map. Instead, it gives you an address so that you have to find it yourself on the map. This is a time wasting exercise. Further, many times I found the address could not be found on the maps provided by the book, either because the rue is too small and thus omitted by the book, or because the arrondissement is not included.

2) After the book mentions a place, it tends not to tell you how to get there. For example, it mentions Versaille is a must go and you can get there by RER. But which line?? How often is the service?? It also fails to mention that the RER offers a package deal including return ticket and admission to the palace - it would save a lot of time (at least 1 - 1.5 hour) waiting in the queue.

3) After the book mentions a place, it does not tell you how to pronounce it in French. So you will struggle when you get in a cab, or try to get help from the locals.

There are so many imperfections in this book, making it close to worthless. For example, I would really appreciate some more write up about the cultral backgroud, etiquette etc. in France. The restaurant recommendations were not great, either. Some recommended restaurants were closed for the season, some do not serve coffee at a certain time (yet the book fails to mention).

I finally went out of my way and found a recommended spot, that was open and serving food. The food was good, but not significantly better than the random walk-ins that I found when the book's recommendations failed to deliver. And it was expensive. I also noticed that in that restaurant almost all diners were international travelers, many with a Frommer's - obviously not a spot enjoyed by the locals.

On the inside cover of the book, it quoted Des Moines Sunday Register's somewhat indifferent remarks ("Hotel recommendations are close to encyclopedic"). I guess that the hotel recommendations would really help one navigate the city! Further, that newspaper only has a circulation of 250,000 (by comparison, USA Today has 2.5 million circulation) - hardly an authority on anything. But wait, where the hell is Des Moines?? Bill Bryson, one of my favourite comtemporary writers, once honestly wrote about Des Moines, his home town in Iowa, as "nothing really happens... every one just wants to get out of there!" I should have been alarmed when I saw a book quoting from such a newspaper!

Enough ranting. The book is written by some supposedly famous writers, but good writers do not equal good travel writers. And this book has evidenced that. I believe a good guide book should present clear and accurate information about a location in a user-friendly way. This book is anything but. So it will be my first and last Frommer's. I hope it would not be your first.

Streetwise Paris

There are more clichés about Paris than there are tourists at the Louvre, but the fact is that underneath each overused hackneyed cliché is a glistening kernel of truth. The City of Light, the City of Love and the City of Romance, familiar platitudes, but once you experience it for yourself you understand why. There is a je ne sais quoi allure to this city that beguiles, but never completely reveals what makes it so universally appealing. Artists, poets, writers, and composers have tried to define exactly what it is about this place, and yet they succeed only to a point. Perhaps it is as elusive as defining love, for to be in Paris entails experiencing love, about someone, something, some place.

There is so much to do - you know the big ones, the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Sacre Coeur, St. Germain des Pres, the Left Bank, the Right Bank, the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysées, the Opéra- but don’t miss the fun of discovering the small ones, the ones off the beaten path. Nothing like taking your time strolling thru the turn of the century mansion that houses Musée Marmottan then enjoying a café and patisserie in the museums jewel box café.

Wandering aimlessly is romantic. Getting lost isn’t romantic. In fact there are few things that can drain the romance out of a situation faster than realizing that you’re hopelessly lost. So take your travel map and put it away if you want to wander, but have no fear that your wandering will turn into a lost odyssey. You can always pull out the STREETWISE® Paris Map and get yourself pointed back in the right direction.

This map was an essential element of my time spent in Paris. It is perfect if you're going to be in Paris and need a very detailed street map while walking through the city. It doesn't cover many of the outer-lying areas, but it covers the heart of the city in-depth. I speak zero French and this map got me wherever I needed to go. I would recommend any of 'Streetwise' maps. I have used quite a few, both internationally and nationally, and have found them all to be extremely useful. In fact, whenever I know I'm going to be visiting a different city I buy one! Also worth the price because the maps are very durable, they're laminated and I've never had one tear on me.

Quiet Corners of Paris

For many travelers, Paris is Parisland. Here's the Eiffel Tower. Let's take a boat ride along the Seine. Ah, the Champs Elysees. Five museums on the list --- let's whip through them. And, late at night, we've got to find that nightclub where the girls kick up their ...heels.

Others --- that's my brood and me --- go to Paris for the quiet. We sit in cafes for hours. We settle on park benches. We take long walks on nearly empty streets. It's still Parisland, just another kind: an open-air library, a set for dreaming, an urban pillow for outdoor naps.

It's hard to imagine that a book called "Quiet Corners of Paris" would be a shocker, but this sometime Parisian was shocked --- and thrilled --- by what's in these pages. Many tour books promise to deliver "secrets" and never do. This one does. Many times.

Its secret: It does not stick to the four or five arrondissements where tourists congregate. Instead, it draws on the entire city --- and thus challenges you to leave your literal "comfort zone" and get out to neighborhoods where real Parisians can be found. And more: really quiet zones: villas, gardens, courtyards, fountains and passages.

The book is ordered by arrondissement, which means you start with the familiar. In the 1st arrondissement, we find the courtyard of the Louvre (check!), the Galerie Vero-Dodat (gotcha!), the garden of the Palais-Royal (good times!) and the Place Dauphine (been to almost every restaurant there!). But no sooner have we hit the 3rd arrondissement than the unknown intrudes: the Saint-Gilles-Grand-Veneur garden, Karsten Greve's art gallery, the Billettes Cloister. Oh, the time I could have frittered away in those beautiful settings.

I was charmed by the garden of a daycare center in the 4th. Busy and noisy? Not on weekends. I knew nothing of a library that specializes in the decorative arts; it's in a lovely mansion and has a tranquil garden. The Irish Cultural Center: how crowded might that be? And it's nice to know that the Hotel des Grandes Ecoles not only has a "flower-filled, tree-studded" garden, it's also "modestly" priced.

Have you visited the Arena of Lutece, the city's largest Gallo-Roman ruin? I haven't. And while I love obscure museums, the mansion dedicated to Delacroix eluded me. As did the garden of the French Lutheran Church in the 7th. And the rowboats you can rent at the bois de Vincennes in the 12th.

The further from Parisland, the bigger the surprises. I want to visit the Cité des Arts, in the 14th, where "the creme of the modern art world" lived. The "tract" homes of the Villa Santos-Dumont in the 15th are a welcome walk through time into Modernism's best representatives. I could easily spend an hour watching men play pétanque at the Square Blomet in the 15th. A Buddhist garden and Balzac's house in the 16th --- there's a reason to take the Métro.

More than 80 suggestions. All very high on my list of "musts" the next time I find myself in Paris with a good book, a fresh cigar, a few hours to kill --- and no desire to be anywhere near the Mona Lisa.

Seven Ages of Paris

One of the most beautiful cities in the world has finally found a worthy biographer in A. J. Horne. Paris has always held a fascination for most, being a center of not only political and commercial interest, but also home to the art and culture known throughout the world. Horne's book describes the history of the city, with particular interest on the architectural changes, by highlighting seven different time periods, beginning with an introduction of the early beginnings of the city culminating in the late 1960's riots which shook Paris. Wonderfully written, with snippets of information hard to find elsewhere. For example, I often wondered by St. Genevieve was the patron saint of the city. Horne supplies that information that very early during the history of the city an attack was feared from the invaders of the west and as the city prepared to flee, young Genevieve had a vision that the attack would not take place and halted the evacuation. It's little pieces of information such as this, which made the book an exceptionally fun as well as educating read.
Special attention is also paid to other significant historical events, especially those after the 1600's. What really strikes the read is one thing: the number of uprisings (the French Revolution of 1789 was only one in a series) that had struck the city, most of them organized on a grass roots level. This also helps explains why the cobblestones of the streets have been cemented into place...these make very good missiles for those fed up with the weak administration of the city. That is another point that the author stresses...sanitation and city planning came very late to Paris, and this led to unimaginable squalor in various quarters of the city.

The reader is also introduced to some of the great figures of French history, particularly Henri IV (famous for his "Paris is worth a mass") and Emperor Napoleon III (who fled the country immediately following the defeat of the French in the Franco-Prussian war). Other notables include Haussman who reinvented the look of the city we now see.

The writing is crisp and flows wonderfully from chapter to chapter. Not at all a technical march of statistics, but a story of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Highly recommended for everyone who ever dreams of Paris.

Paris Paris

There are two kinds of travel books: those you use to help you plan a trip and those you want to have in your pocket when you make it. This exceptional book falls into the latter. Although it features some information on hotels and travel, these aspects of a prospective trip to Paris will be handled much more thoroughly by other volumes. Where this book excels is in its comprehensive coverage of things that any traveler will want to know, primarily the question: Where am I, and what do I want to see while in this section of Paris? Some travel books contain more information, but many of these fail to filter that which is likely to be of interest and that which is not. What is amazing about this one is the usability and pertinacity of the information presented.
The book begins with a brief history of Paris, and then provides an overview of the city as a whole. Much of the remainder of the volume consists of introductions to specific areas of Paris, letting any traveler know what the immediate highlights in any area are. The presentation of the information is as attractive as one can imagine, with beautiful graphics, beautiful photographs, and marvelous summations of the various highpoints in the city. The book ends with a useful index and a collection of high quality maps. Best of all, the book is amazingly compact and durable given the sheer mass of information it packages. Unlike its competitors, it will never be an encumbrance because of its size.

I have not looked at any of the other DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, but this one is so gorgeous that it is definitely the series that I would look at first in any trip that I was contemplating making. It is such a marvelous book that one could consult it with profit merely as a way of getting to know a city, even if one is not planning to travel there.

Rick Steves' Paris 2009

I've traveled to Europe several times over the past 8 years and purchased various guide books for the planning of each trip and as a guide during the trip. By far the best and most reliable is the Rick Steves series. Factual information. I like it because he has a back door philosphy. I feel like I'm getting the background information from someone that has lived there for years. I also love how I'm able to use it as a guide once I'm there too. He has walking tours of museums - of course I typically purchase the musuem audio tours but in the random time that I don't pay for it, it's nice to have one in the guidebook. I like knowing the hours and cost of sites. Also the restaurants and hotels he has reccommeded have always been better than expected. I will always use Rick Steves whenever traveling to Europe. I know that he updates these yearly! I just wish he made these books for other parts of the world!
- Love how everything is described in detail. Ina country where I don't speak the language, I expect to be prepared when I walk out of my hotel room and I was.

A Tourist In The Yucatan

The story begins with a bloody shoot-out on a ferry between the Yucatan Peninsula and Isla Mujeres, then moves to an idyllic, lazy vacation day with Jack and Josephine Phillips at their hotel. The ferry shoot-out seems a world away to Jack and Jo, who head to the mainland the following morning, befriending fellow American Stephen Potter on their way to Chichen Itza. They travel with Potter for a couple of days, until one morning's headlines claim Stephen Potter is someone else--a wanted drug dealer. Jack is too late to steal away with Jo, as she is missing on his return to their hotel, and Jack is soon arrested by the federales. Jack finds himself in the middle of a web of intrigue involving both the U.S. and Mexican governments and a dangerous gang of drug dealers and tomb robbers as he searches for the truth about his wife's disappearance. Ordinarily, books where the protagonist is an unwitting victim trapped in a series of events wherein everyone knows what's going on but him do not appeal to me. Jack, however, while at times numb and passive, does not live at the whim of others. He catches onto survival pretty fast, while working his way through the maze of intrigue around him, and I found myself rooting for Jack and the other good guys to beat the impossible odds. There are two stories unfolding; Jack on the run from the bad guys, and at the Washington end, Nelson Carlton unravels a series of murders directly related to the plight Jack finds himself in. Both are packed with action and intrigue that kept me turning the pages. I look forward to Brumfield's next book.

Diners, Drive-ins and Dives

I don't come close to watching the national average --- six-plus hours a day --- of television. And as a veteran of restaurant kitchens, the last thing I want to see is celebrity chefs in a cook-off. But as soon as I chanced upon "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives", I knew what I'd be doing on Monday nights at 10. First reason: the host. Guy Fieri has blond hair, short and spiked. He favors home-boy basketball shorts. He wears his sunglasses reversed, the better to shade the eyes on the back on his head. He drives a muscle car. And when he savors something truly delectable, his phrase of choice is "This is money."

Guy Fieri and fine dining --- no way. Guy Fierri in a down-home joint that we might love, as much for its prices as for its cuisine --- addictive. Second reason: the places he visits. These aren't just any owner-run restaurants with Formica tabletops and paper napkins. The proprietors must be gifted chefs who serve up surprise and originality along with heaping portions and genuine smiles. And the more out-of-the-way, the better. Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip is the record of the show's first two years. It starts, appropriately, with the A1 diner in Gardiner, Maine --- it sits on stilts, and, as Guy can't resist saying, "the food is on another level, too".

Think: mojito-glazed duck, Asian corn fritters, Greek flank steak roulade. In Baltimore, the Blue Moon Cafe serves Cap'n Crunch-encrusted French toast. J.T. Farnham's in South Essex, Massachusetts, dips clams in evaporated milk and a "secret mixture" before frying. Of course it's White Manna, in Hackensack, New Jersey, that has mini-sliders to drive for. Guy chows down on Buffalo wings that are fried, then grilled, at Scully's in Miami. Tom's Bar-B-Q in Memphis can be found in an industrial park. Hillbilly Hot Dogs in Lesage, West Virginia, are sold in a shack. In Glenview, Illinois, get your Hackneyburger in a ...house. Guy is from California, and he can't hide his preference for Western grub. Only not just the basics. He craves abalone-on-sourdough in Pescadero, taquitos in a place in San Diego I've never heard of though my brother has lived there for 25 years, and a falafel joint in San Jose.

The book features 51 places you will want to visit the next time your car cries for a road trip. There are lots of recipes (okay, too many are for pancakes, but nobody gives away the real secrets). And, in every line, you'll find a generous serving of Guy's wit, enthusiasm and food knowledge. "Where is Flavortown?" Guy often asks. This way.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Quite simply, as a writer myself, I think it is clear that Liz Gilbert fictionalized the events of her year spent abroad in order to tie neat bows of resolution into each section. As any writer knows - reality does not occur in narrative packages with a clear beginning, middle and satisfying end. That only occurs in the difficult process of creating that structure to satisfy the drive for narrative pleasure that we humans all seem to have. If this was not a difficult task, then many more people could be successful writers than there are. The fact that Ms. Gilbert's book has more narrative structure and satisfying conclusions that occur in clear chapters, that she seems to accomplish every goal that she sets out, that she is surrounded by apparent magic and a universe that seems to want to grant her every wish and need with guides, and poetry and perfect experiences of awakening: i.e. a year of complete and wonderful syncronity - smacks of extraordinary dishonesty. Life might work like this in romantic movies (and quite frankly rarely does to *this* degree) or in Harry Potter books (not to criticize those books - but they are fantasy fulfillment of magic and personal specialness) - but tell me of one person whose life *in reality* is so special and so magical that it works out in so many perfectly tied up bows. God must love her much more than the rest of humanity if she was prepaid to write a book on her experiences and they just so happened to work out in such a narratively and emotionally satisfying fashion.


It is especially blessed for her publisher as well, who certainly saw the financial opportunity of writing about the joys of food, spirituality, balance, healing and romance: as these are currently the topics of most of the top selling "nonfiction" books these days. What would have happened if Ms. Gilbert did not have success in all of these areas that she was prepaid to write about? Certainly a disappointing return for the publisher. And given the necessity of there being a happy ending to such a search for any "inspirational" book to be successful (which clearly this was meant to be from the get-go: she certainly couldn't come back from this year as confused and broken-hearted as she left) - I don't see how her editors would have accepted anything less from their investment in her journey.

Finally, Ms. Gilbert's years of magazine writing at such popular and PR driven rags as GQ and Spin mean that she was quite skilled at turning any interview or experience into a romanticized view that would "sell" to an audience. It isn't like they were the New Yorker or The Atlantic. I have read many an article in those magazines about people I actually have worked with or know personally, and never have I found them to be something other than fawning - even in their moments of "criticism" of the artist.

Sorry - I only finished the book out of my continued fascination and curiosity with how far she would push this "God loves me so much that he made everything work out perfectly for me in the end, at every moment and in all areas of my quest and in every way that I needed." Can you name someone else this has ever happened to in your life? If so, than I'd be interested in hearing their story, because hopefully it would not smack of such fabrication and flat out hokum.