Lonely Planet Provence & the Cte D'Azur

The Lonely Planet series of travel guides is one I have come to depend on, and this is one of the better ones. Good, concise, useable information. The thing that keeps it from being five stars is the hotel and restaurant listings, which are woefully insufficient. But when you're driving around Provence and stumble on a medieval town and want to know if there's a story there or not, this book will tell you.

I must say this is my first experience with Lonely Planet guides, though i already had high recommendations and positive feed-backs. I decided to give it a go with my 4-weeks in Sun. :-) I spent four weeks travelling around Cote D'Azur and Haute-Provence from Monaco to Marseille and into Alps e.g. Castellane, St. Andre, etc. The information contained is ver much accurate and helpful (i was travelling alone, not with a group!). There are sufficient maps of major regions and city but this guide should not be used for the sake of map. Always take a detailed map e.g. a driving one if you got wheels otherwise every tourist office got full detailed city maps.Five stars stuff.

We used this guide, along with the Triple A guide on Provence and the Cote d'Azure. The Lonely Planet guide was by far the most relevant and contained most of the practacilities the traveler needs. Some of the facts and features were a little different than the author stated, and it could have been quite a bit more thorough regarding the practacilities of driving. Historical and cultural information was both well done and interesting. Definitely 4* and possibly 4 1/2 *.

Once again, Lonely Planets demonstrates why so many travelers rely on its books. This book had exactly the information we needed: markets, hotels, bed/breakfasts, highlights, commentary. We spent 5-days driving through Southern France and found the book to provide almost everything we needed to get around and plan our itinerary. The book is organized very well and topics could be referenced very quickly. It may not have all the depth of others, but it does have enough content to inform. And the clarity of the writing and structure more than make up for it.