Provence & the Cote D'Azur

My work has provided me with the opportunity to travel a good bit. I am the type of person who wants to get a working background for my destinations, both in terms of history and geographic layout. Because I work, I don't have a great deal of time to spend reading and studying different, often lengthy, travel guides before or during my trips. Because these guides are concise, beautifully illustrated, relatively compact, and impeccably organized, I cannot recommend highly enough the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Travel Guides! The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide is THE guide I buy for every destination. Not only do I get a quick history and background of the destination, but I also will be provided with a visual guide to everything. The visual detail is really what sets the DK Eyewitness Travel Guides apart. The street maps of common destination points are drawn in dimensional detail so you will visually recognize when you "get there." This is particularly helpful when you don't speak the native language. The regional maps are colorful and concise. However, the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide really shows its stuff with the drawings associated with attractions such as museums and churches. Their presentation of building layouts allow the traveler who is short on time to quickly see the best of the attraction within the time the traveler has to spend. Each DK Eyewitness Travel Guide has a good summary section in the back with practical information about where to eat, where to sleep, what to do, and how to get around. While I may supplement the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide with others for a more detailed travel guide, the other guide is only more to read, not more to see. Buy the DK Eyewitness Travel Guide first for any destination.

We recently traveled throughout Provence and used this guide to determine what to stop and see and what to miss. Great pictures, up-to-date information about costs and hours. We use this series whenever we travel.

What a great guide; this book is a gold mine of off-the-beaten path places. I ran into very few American tourists and discovered many secret places that I'll definitely visit again. The photographs and detailed descriptions of using pay telephones, parking meters and public bathrooms were great and saved me alot of time on the learning curve. I like that it doesn't contain huge laundry lists of hotel and restaurant addresses; I enjoy patronizing establishments that I find by just walking around. There is something for every style of traveller in this little gem!

I love the eyewitness guides. I have both the Provence/Cote d'Azur and the Paris guides. The numerous pictures and computer graphics are very helpful. I was able to plan a lot of my trip by these guides, having the knowledge of what was out there before I went which, when on a limited schedule, is very helpful. I recomment all of the eyewitness guides for anyone who travels.

This was our bible on our two week driving trip through these areas. Once I got the hang of the organization of the book, it was a wonderful planning aid, to be sure we could fit everything in. It's acually an Eyewitness travel guide, which I have purchased again for Venice, and I'm now getting the Paris edition. No matter what they say, pictures do help! The strength of these books is their travel and itinerary advice, not hotels and restaurants, although there is a brief section about them. It's a wonderful trip, and this book is an excellent companion.