Brittany

As other Michelin Green Guides, this edition includes comprehensive descriptions of towns, sights, culture and much more. I especially like the tips for dining out, the list of cultural events, market days and such. Highly recommended!

You can't logically compare a travel book to a novel or a history, and there's probably no single set of criteria for a good travel book. But, for a travel book focusing on Brittany, there should be an eye on history and a focus on what makes a place significant or scenically beautiful. The style of the book should be lively, the voice and attitude of the author should be evident, and book should contain useful and practical details to reduce hassle and fuss. It should have an opinion, and it should be believable. The objective of all of this is to assist the planning which will in turn make the vacation enjoyable and personally relevant. In our case, we have not traveled to Brittany yet, so we are looking for a way to see a few of the best sights.The Michelin Green Guide to Brittany scores top marks. That is why I rated it 4-star. It is clearly written and has a nice style. It contains vast amounts of informative geographic and historical material, and there is a lavish number of maplets and photographs. However, it cannot stand-alone and be the only guidebook to Brittany that you will ever need. It needs to be combined with Philippe Barbour's Brittany, and perhaps, the 60 or so pages on Brittany and Nantes in the Lonely Planet's guide to France. Although the content is fabulous, the Michelin Green Guide is arranged alphabetically, not geographically, so one needs to do a lot of page turning to understand a sub-region within Brittany. The Lonely Planet and Barbour logically arrange their sections geographically, connect them together, and contrast them. Both The Lonely Planet and Barbour have nice sections on housing-hotel areas and specific hotel recommendations, and Barbour does the best. The Lonely Planet is, unfortunately, focused on one-star places and below.The Michelin Green Guide to Brittany is a solid 4-star performer in the area of trip planning and definitely on the recommended list.