Frustrating time waster, 16 Oct 2005

I took this book to Paris and found it endlessly frustrating. The layout isn't intuitive, and the detail you need just isn't there.

The maps were the worst point. The authors divide the chapters by the various quarters, as is common, but the maps are dealt with separately. The book is so badly planned that the main areas covered in detail in the description actually fall on the far edges of the maps - we wasted so much time flipping pages to find the other half of the map for where we were. It also doesn't have an overview map of central Paris, meaning there is no way of getting an accurate perspective of where you are at any one time. For example, the latin quarter (one of the very popular areas) is on the far corner of a couple of different pages of maps, and there isn't one that shows all of the Champs Elysee.

It has a whole page dedicated to pictures of Euro's (please, if you need photographs of the money to know what's what then you probably shouldn't be out alone), yet it hardly lists a single price for anything it mentions. Safety advice consists of 'if you're mugged call the police' (thanks, well worth £15 for that gem), although it does have full colour pictures of what policemen and women look like in case you're so culture shocked that you can't see the word 'police' that they all wear on their backs, or spot the utility belt with handgun.

It reads like a tourist office promotion, for example it lists reatraurants but doesn't have the courage to review any of them, and offers few of the useful tips you would find in most good guidebooks such as the best time to visit somewhere or any cultural tips and hints .

The book is full of school-book snippets of trivia about landmarks that franky, you would find out if you visited anyway, and lacks basic information. It tried to do too much (offering historical information and tourist information) and comes well short of the mark on both.

If you're taking kids to Paris, maybe get them this as a pretend version of a grown up guidebook. If you have a map of Paris, access to the internet and the slightest common sense, you won't need it.

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