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AA Essential Guides Series: Paris
by pink_glitter
My fiancé took me to Paris for my birthday recently. I had been there before but at the time had been quite young and didn't remember or appreciate a lot of it. My fiancé organised most of our trip and did research online for the best places to go. It got to about a week before we were due to leave and I suddenly found myself feeling ... very unprepared for the trip. When I was waiting in a queue and spotted an AA Pocket Guide to Paris for just £2, I snapped it up, hoping I could read up on what to do and what to see before we left.
The book itself is pocket sized and indeed for most of the trip my fiancé carried it in his pocket, due to the map of the metro in the back. The one we have was first published in 2008, but states that it was reprinted in June 2010, so I can only assume most of the information is up to date. There are lots of coloured pictures throughout and the way the book is written is clear and the formatting makes it easy to read and find what you are looking for. The book is split into five sections: Planning, Best Places to See, Exploring, Excursions and Maps.
==Planning==
This was a relatively short section, but did contain some useful information. Some of it was pretty obvious, such as what currency is accepted, but other information in this section was more useful. There is a little chart showing what you should expect the weather to be like at certain times of the year, time difference, national holidays and how to get around once you're there. We were aware of most of this information already, however I'm sure that this section will come in handy for at least someone.
==Best Places to See==
This is a rundown of what the authors deem to be the top 10 places to see whilst in Paris. These include the Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysees and The Louvre - all the places you would probably expect to see. The problem with this section, in my opinion, is that the only information given on these places is their history. This is all well and good, but I felt that more opinion and information relevant to someone travelling there would be more useful.
Take for instance, the Louvre. There are two pages on the history of the Louvre and information about each 'department' within it. It does not, however give information about things such as how long each visit will take or whether it is suitable for children - things I feel people would want to know. Never having been before myself, I naively suggested we visit the Louvre in the morning and then the Eiffel Tower at lunch time before heading out for a meal in the evening. My fiancé laughed and told me that the Louvre is huge and not the sort of thing you can just see in a morning. Why did the book not tell me that? In my opinion, that's the sort of information that it should be giving, not who built it or how long it took them. We actually went on a boat cruise where the guide told us that if you were to stand in front of each piece of artwork in the Louvre for 1 minute it would take 4 months to see everything! If that sort of thing had been in the book I feel it would have helped me to plan my trip better.
In fairness, there is a key at the bottom, showing nearest metro and addresses of each attraction, but even on this key I felt things were missing and I would have liked to have known things such as approximate entry fee and how likely we would have to queue to get in - that sort of thing.
==Exploring==
This section is much the same as the previous one. Rather than individual attractions, this section focuses more on areas of the city, although there are still some museums and monuments included here, such as the Arc de Triomphe.
This section did give us some idea of different places to visit that we may not necessarily have thought have going to. The problem, again, was lack of personal opinion - I got the feeling that the person who wrote it had just Googled Paris and written a few sentences on each place. There was little to indicate that the writers had even been there themselves and I felt there was far too much history, which in my personal opinion was largely irrelevant.
==Excursions==
Excursions is the last section of the book and this has short sections on things outside of Paris, but still in easy reach by train. One section is Disneyland, which is somewhere we did go, but there are literally two sentences on that, so I would recommend purchasing a separate guide book if you're going there. I must admit, we didn't really use this section much because other than that one day at Disney we didn't plan on going too far out of the city.
==Maps==
For us the maps section of the book was by far the most useful and we used it every day for the map of the Metro in the back. If you've ever travelled on the Paris metro then you will know what a confusing nightmare it is at first (although by the third day we pretty much knew it like the back of our hand!), so this was invaluable to us. There are also several pages of street maps, which is handy to have in an unfamiliar place.
==Conclusion==
I don't normally bother buying guide books and this one has reminded me why. I found it really poor, and it was more like a history of the main attractions in Paris than a handy reference for tourists. To sum up, if this book was a review I would give it a 'Somewhat Useful' rating - too much fact and history, not enough personal opinion!
*also posted on Ciao
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