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| Rick Steves' France 2008 (Rick Steves) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Rick Steves, Steve Smith
Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $0.97
You Save: $20.98 (96%)
Buy New/Used from $0.74
Avg. Customer Rating:  (15 reviews)
Sales Rank: 324586
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 732
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8 x 4.5 x 1.1
ISBN: 1566918553
Dewey Decimal Number: 914.40484
EAN: 9781566918558
ASIN: 1566918553
Publication Date: October 28, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Rick Steves is always a help January 13, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
We've used other books of Rick Steves to travel by and not been disappointed, so we're looking forward to all of the helpful advice that he has to give us. We're not traveling until the fall, so I won't know if the advice is good or bad.
Christmas gift December 26, 2007
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
All of Rick Steves travel guides are invaluable. I gave a set to my daughter for Christmas for her upcoming trip to Europe.
 Not for Us June 17, 2007
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
My francophile boyfriend and I took Rick Steve's 2007 to France because it gave us a hefty discount at a Paris Hotel which looked interesting. We started out in the Riviera, and found the maps inaccurate and not to scale. The book-recommended restaurants that we went to were sub-par, and clearly geared toward a mainstream American palate. If you're the type that goes to McDonald's in foreign countries, Rick Steve's is for you. The book skipped Aix En Provence, our next stop, entirely - too french, perhaps? Then we got to Hotel Castex, the aforementioned discounted hotel in Paris. It was a PIT. The room we were given was a dark hole with two sagging twin beds when we had asked for a double. There was about a foot of space between the beds and the door. We got out of there immediately. So my general impression of this book is that it caters to scared Americans who, in the author's opinion, are second-rate, and gives them second-rate tourist traps to visit. Go with Fodor's, Lonely Planet, or your gut.
Rick Steves France 2007 March 16, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an excellent book if you are traveling in France. It highlights all of the areas you want to see plus gives you valuable insights into the places to eat, shop, sleep, etc. We have used this book for all our travels and it works wonderfully.
 Not for a person going by rail! March 19, 2005
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
I absolutely hate to give a Rick Steve's book a bad review but in this case I am going to have to. I will preface this however that if you have access to a car this book is proably great for you!
AND therein lies the main difficulty with this book. Most independent (and in my case young) travelers that visit Europe do so via rail. Why not? The service is good in most places and absolutely top notch in others (i.e.: Switzerland). It's also affordable and allows you to get to many places at a relatively inexpensive price.
This books, however, seems to ignore the rail traveler and focus instead on the person with a car or the person who wants to go and take a lot of local tours. For example, he'll list places in the Dordogne and then inform you that most of them are only accessible by car. Ditto for Provence. He'll also list cute little hotels and again tell you they are only accessible by car. He even lists a whole bunch of recommended auto routes. In addition, because he leaves out certain places that are easily accessible by train (i.e: Aix) the rail traveler feels left out!
That would be all good and fine if that's what one had come to expect from Rick Steves -- but at least in my case it is not! I have used the Rick Steves books before and I LOVED them! In fact I can HIGHLY recommend "Best of Europe" and "Mona Winks" (believe the title has changed). Those books were great. Serioulsy, Mona Winks made Florence come alive for me. We would read it in every museum we visited. And Best of Europe led me to some of the most fabulous places -- including Gimmelwald. But what I really liked is that those books really felt as though they were meant for a rail traveler.
I've bought Rick Steve's France 2005 but I've also come to the conclusion that it's not for me. If at all possible I will be returning it!
That is not to say however that I won't be taking my Best of Europe or Mona Winks books with me -- I wouldn't leave home without them!
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