The Paris Mapguide

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!

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!

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.)

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

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.

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.

1. Product on Amazon: The photo on the Amazon description shows the 3rd edition of this book. When you click on the "Look Inside" on the Amazon description the next to the last page shows the book as the 3rd edition (published in 2006). HOWEVER, the book that was delivered to me was happily the 5th edition of this book (published in 2012).
2. 5th Edition Book Summary: Pages 2-3 are a very detailed colored coded Paris Metro map. Pages 4-15 contain a very brief summary of Paris history, and lists of museums and art galleries, places of interest, churches of interest, shopping, and nightlife (all with map locations noted). Pages 16-17 are the maps section legend, pages 18-19 a map showing what the detailed maps cover, and pages 20-48 the main detailed maps. Page 49 contains information on parks and gardens and sports. Pages 50-53 contain information and detailed maps of the Bois de Boulogne, the Bois de Vincennes, and Versailles. Page 54 contains information on Entertainment. Pages 55-64 are a street index.
3. 5th Edition Review: This book is an easy to carry essential for a visit to Paris. This 5th edition is very similar to the prior edition I owned (2nd edition) with some added details. The maps on pages 20-48 are amazingly detailed. They show small streets, park paths, Metro lines and stops, bus routes, police stations, post offices (and more). Despite all this information, the maps are quite easy to read (though you may find a pair of reading glasses useful at times). The other information in the book is also very useful - for example, a list of the major Paris street markets showing the days and hours they are active. Because it is only 64 pages, this book is really not a replacement for a guidebook to Paris. But after you review your several hundred page long guidebook, and decide where you want to go, you can leave that huge book behind. This is the book with the maps and other information you will want/need when you are actually out and about in Paris. I would not have seen nearly as much of Paris and would not have enjoyed it nearly as much without this wonderfully helpful book.

I had hoped this would be the perfect guide to use while in Paris on a recent trip but it wasn't. I didn't find it convenient so it didn't become the 'go to' map on a recent trip. I should have bought a laminated fold-up map with the metro and train routes superimposed on the street map. Friends had one of that type and I kept borrowing it from them to plot my routes to various museums and restaurants that I wanted to visit. It was far too difficult to use the guide I purchased because you couldn't visualize the whole trip since only one section of the map is visible at a time. I'll know better the next time.

I bought this guide maybe 10 years ago for a vacation and I have since moved to Paris. While I can't guarantee those results for everyone, I can guarantee that this is an excellent map. I now own two copies and lend them to friends when they visit. Since I live here, I use my Google Maps app on my phone to navigate around town, but if you don't want to use data while roaming internationally, this is your best bet. The guide includes a little information on attractions/museums/etc, but I've really used it as a map only. I find it easier to read than many other maps I've seen.

I've used this book on my last three visits to Paris. It's invaluable in finding the location of where you want to go. Then you find the closest Metro stop. You look at the Metro map and jot down your route. For example, I went through this process to locate and visit the Carnavalet museum which is kind of off the beaten path.

When you arrive, the detail maps are also wonderful in helping you find your bearings. A tour bus dropped me in an unfamiliar area. I went to my trusty map and found the closest walking route to my hotel.

It's a wonderful size and very easy to carry. It's set up well so you can quickly find the site you are seeking. 100 thumbs up.

This is the best best best!!! We went to Paris for two weeks and only used this map (not a phone gps or anything)! I couldn't recommend it more highly! My favorite aspect is the appendix of street names. You can look up a street name and find the cross street and voila! you are not lost - just on an adventure :)
If you are going to Paris this is a must have!

I have visited Paris often and find this to be the very best map available. It is comprehensive, easy to use, and fits easily into my purse. I tell my husband it is my "magic" map since I can always find whatever I am looking for and, on those occasions when we wander off the beaten track, I have no trouble figuring out where we are and how to get back to our hotel. I wouldn't dream of going to Paris without it. My one reservation is that as I have grown older, now approaching 70, I find the type isn't as large as it use to be. Of course if the type were larger the map would be too so I will just have to invest in a good magnifying glass.

For my trip to Paris I purchased every single map available and brought them all with me. Immediately, The Paris Mapguide stood out as the one to use. I walked about 10 miles a day and I used it at every other intersection. It was very easy to read and I liked the colors which made the big avenues quick to identify. It's laid out very well and I found it very easy to locate where I was and where I was going. It has every street and park path and covers a broad area of Paris. I also liked it because it's a discreet package and I didn't have to fiddle with a foldout map. The size is perfect and it fits into almost every pocket. For even easier access, I folded it once vertically to 3" x 8.5". It's a well constructed booklet and it wore well. I left all my reference materials behind in Paris, but I brought this map home -- it was so useful and broken in I couldn't bear to part with it.

This is exactly the sort of book i.e.street guide, on Paris I have been looking for.It contains a lot of useful information in an amazingly small amount of space. I will be taking it with me to Paris as is is not too bulky nor heavy and it will come in very handy when I am planning an outing somewhere in the city.

I should have paid more attention to the lower rated reviews because they were spot on. There is no detailed book of Paris, only poorly detailed regional maps which are very difficult to piece together. A true waste of money!