A little help from the Michelin man (michelin-travel.com)

Member Name: kingseany

Product:	michelin-travel.com
Date:	10/05/05 (1490 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free info, Up to date, Little distraction

Disadvantages: None I can think of

The site previously known as www.michelin-travel.com is now known as www.ViaMichelin.com

Essentially this is a site run by the well known tyre people, Michelin to help you with various aspects of road travel throughout the whole of Europe.

The home page is fairly clearly laid out, with the obvious sections easy to identify - Driving Directions, Maps, Traffic, Weather and The Michelin Guides.

Driving Directions - If you are planning a trip, no matter what the distance, with this option you can get a plan of which roads to take. Simply enter a road, or town / area, and the same for your destination, click ok and in a few seconds it creates a route plan for you. The summary will tell you the distance and travel time. You can select km or miles. You can enter the price per litre for fuel, and your average fuel consumption, and it will work out an approximate cost for the journey too, plus take into account any toll roads where you might have to pay. Underneath the summary, you'll see a map with scale, which you can zoom right into road level - complete with road names.

Under the map, are the directions themselves. Which road to take, for how long etc. At each point, you can expand to see a map of the area, and if there is an Information symbol, you can click and all the tourist spots are instantly shown in a list, along with another map showing them - this is all really quick. If there is a bed symbol, you can click it for a list of hotels complete with addresses, telephone and web links - as well as another map showing them all. Each hotel can be clicked for even more information. A knife and fork indicates restaurants in the area, and clicking will produce a list and map too. This is really starting to impress me now. To get your return directions, just click onto Return Itinery - and the route plan will be produced to get you home again. All the route plans are colourful and clear, and should make navigation a doddle. Details can of course be emailed or printed out.

The next heading is Maps. Clicking this will bring up a search box, where you can enter a town, area, postcode region or address. This can be in any country in Europe. Click ok, and you will get a map. You can use the slider to zoom in or out to see more or less detail. Some countries maps will not zoom right in to street level however. Maps can be printed or emailed.

The next option is Traffic. Here you can get live traffic information for anywhere in the UK. Simply type in a road or location, and you will see a map showing conditions. I must admit I can't quite tell if this is working properly as all the searches I have tried didn't show up as having any particular slow moving traffic, and I know that can't be right in the UK rush hour!

The Weather section by default shows a map of the UK, and you can click onto an area to get todays weather plus a four day forecast. The max/min temperature, humididty, visability, windspeed and direction are shown, together with an outlook summary. You can also select any other country in Europe. This can be printed.

The Michelin Guides section will allow you to search for Hotels, Restaurants and Tourist attractions. A map will be displayed, along with each location marked, and a clickable list for you to choose. Although the guide seems very comprehensive within the UK, some countries found no matches, for instance I could find no restaurants in Gdansk, Poland.

You can use this site free of charge for all your route planning. If you would like it to save various things, such as maps, regular route plans and so on, you must register, again it's free. You can then make use of the "My ViaMichelin" option.

The site also has news and articles relating to travel which might be of use to you. There are also some downloads - a rally game, wallpaper and screensavers to do with Michelin.

All in all viamichelin.com has a lot of useful content, it's bang up-to-date, it's very quick to calculate routes, maps and so on - doesn't have too much distraction, is free, oh and available in four other languages. A worthy addition to your favourites!

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