Real City Paris: Top Guidebook
New Series of Guides Includes Best of Paris, Written by Parisians
The Real City Guides from Dorling Kindersley are different, written by local people. The Real City Guide to Paris shows there is room for a stylish new Paris guidebook
Does the world need another new guidebook to Paris? When the bookshelves groan with guides to the most romantic city in the world, it's not being cynical to ask if travelers need another new series of city guides. But the Real City Guides from Dorling Kindersley are different. They may be destined to be as popular and as distinctive as their other two well-known series of travel guides, the lavishly-detailed Eyewitness Guides and the fact-packed pocket-sized Top Ten Guides.
Real City Guides are different because they really are written by local experts. Many guidebooks say they are written by 'local experts', but this usually means a writer who has flown out there from Britain or America, stayed for as long as their budget allowed, and immersed themselves in the destination as thoroughly as they could manage. That's not to say the results are poor. Some writers specialise in particular destinations and travel there frequently. An outside eye is also the same eye that the average visitor has – but the writer went there first and did the hard leg-work so that the vacation traveler or business traveler didn't have to.
DK's Real City Paris is written by people who live there, and can genuinely claim to be experts. The authors include Rosa Jackson, who moved to Paris from Canada in 1995 and now teaches cookery classes there. Maryanne Blacker moved there about the same time and has written for the excellent and thorough Paris Time Out Eating and Drinking Guide. Julie Street has lived in Paris since 1989, worked for newspapers and magazines worldwide and concentrated on the Shopping section.
Shopping along gets 36 pages of this stylish 240-page book. Real City Paris is obviously aimed at the hedonistic traveler, with 36 pages on Restaurants, and another 24 pages on Bars and Clubs. By contrast, the Eiffel Tower gets four lines. The visitor who wants four pages of facts, figures and history on the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre will find the Real City guide disappointing. The visitor who likes spending hours deciding where to stay, eat, drink and shop will find the guidebook wonderful.
As with all the Dorling Kindersley guides, the Real City Guides are visually impressive. In contrast to the packed Eyewitness and Top Ten Guides, the Real City Guides have more white space and a more relaxed and chic look to them. They're printed on expensive, glossy paper – no skimping on printing budgets here. They're not as minimalist as the Wallpaper guides, but nowhere near as thorough as a Rough Guide.
The restaurant section is excellent, and highly recommended. Every restaurant listed has a photo with it, which applies to every hotel, shop and attraction too. The write-ups, though brief, made this reader want to eat in almost every place. The hotel section is brief by comparison, perhaps on the assumption that people will find their hotel by other means, such as their tour operator or using internet hotel booking sites. Listings are grouped by area, and there are also several excellent indexes. Want to go shopping/dining/clubbing in eastern Paris? Check the right index and everything's cross-referenced.
The Real City Guides are a welcome addition to the guidebook scene, and the Paris one is certainly good. It also comes with a website password that allows access to updates on the Real City Guides website.
So whether the world needs another guidebook to Paris or not, it's got one – and very good too.
Real City Paris is published by Dorling Kindersley at £9.99 in the UK.
