South of France, 7th (Country & Regional Guides – Cadogan) (Paperback)
May 31, 2009 by Destination Guide
Filed under Travel France Guides
Product Description
Discover the unspoilt beauty of France’s most legendary regions as well as the more famous hot-spots. From the glamour of St. Tropez to the tranquil hills of Provence, this guide explores the whole area with wit, insight, and passion.
From the Back Cover
Mediterranean France arouses the senses with its heady cocktail of light and color, and the Cadogan guide serves it up with verve. It’s all here: the arty, chic Riviera, sunny Provencal villages perches, the serene Canal du Midi, dramatic Roman ruins, cloud-topped Cathar castles, the mysterious Camargue with its white horses, Catalan southern Roussillon, and the sublime landscapes that inspired Van Gogh and Cezanne, Dufy and Matisse – all scented by a sun-warmed bouquet of lavender, violet, mimosa, lemon and wine. Dynamic cities such as Nice, Marseille, Nimes, Montpellier and Perpignan contrast with the serenity of rural Herault, with mountain wildernesses and national parks, and there are markets to explore and restaurants to rival Paris’s finest.
Inside you will find:
* Practical travel advice
* Over 600 hotels, chambres d’hote and auberges
* Over 450 restaurants, bars, brasseries and cafes
* 60 maps and town plans
* color touring-map section
* stunning color photography
* regional wines: where to taste and where to buy
Inside you will find:
* Practical travel advice
* Over 600 hotels, chambres d’hote and auberges
* Over 450 restaurants, bars, brasseries and cafes
* 60 maps and town plans
* color touring-map section
* stunning color photography
* regional wines: where to taste and where to buy
Buy South of France, 7th (Country & Regional Guides – Cadogan) (Paperback) at Amazon
Cadogan Guides are in a category all by themselves. Sick of the usual blandness you encounter in almost all travel books? Pick up any Cadogan Guide and you’ll be entertained even before you travel. The authors are cheeky, to be sure, but I appreciate their willingness to interject their own preferences and opinions, and save me the trouble of visiting a ho-hum attraction. Rather than providing endless pages of glossy photos and reviews that rate most everything as just as good as everything else, Cadogan Guides are packed with dense information and helpful maps. Save the glossy photos for us to take, thank you, and give us the information, please.
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (12/06)
France has long been one of my favorite countries, and the south of France must be one of the most beautiful places on this planet. If you’ve ever had a chance to spend some time there, I am certain you will never forget the colors and the scents of that wondrous region.
Dana Facaros and Michael Pauls have written a phenomenal guidebook to this extraordinary region, filled with an incredible amount of useful information as well as some of the most sparkling travel writing that I have read in quite a while. Just listen to this:
“By 19 BC, the fountain of Nemausus could no longer slake Nîmes’ thirst, and a search was on for a new source. The Romans were obsessed with the quality of their water, and when they found a crystal-clear spring called the Eure near Uzès, the fact that it was 48km away hardly posed an obstacle to antiquity’s star engineers. The resulting aqueduct, built under Augustus’ son-in-law Agrippa, was like a giant needle hemming the landscape, piercing tunnels through hills and looping its arches over the open spaces of the garrigues, and all measured precisely to allow a slope of .07 centimetres per metre. [...] … the Roman engineers knuckled down, ordered a goodly supply of neatly dressed stone from the nearby quarries at Vers, and built the Pont du Gard, at 157ft the highest of all Roman aqueducts and, along with the span in Segovia, the best preserved in the world. … No matter how many photos you’ve seen before, the aqueduct’s three tiers of arches of golden stone without mortar make a brave and lovely sight….”
If a description like this does not whet your appetite to see the Pont du Gard, I truly do not know what could. You can nearly see the Roman engineers scratching their heads, trying to figure how to design the aqueduct; and hear them arguing about whose solution is best…
In addition to such brilliantly vivid descriptions, the guidebook offers all of the usual and necessary information for a visitor to the area, with listings for over 600 places to stay, over 450 places to eat and drink, plus lots of practical information, 60 area and city maps and more. The 26 color photographs in the first section will certainly introduce the amazing colors of the region, but you will have to visit in person to get the scents and sounds of it right. Two sections that I liked particularly well were the “Further Reading” section at the very end of the book as well as the great sections on where to taste and buy the local wine, which can be found throughout the book.
I would recommend “South of France” highly to anybody who wishes to explore the South of France in more depth. And if you are unable to go there in person, this guidebook could help transport you there by simply reading a chapter and closing your eyes.