“Insight Guide: Paris” (Langenscheidt Publishers, $21.95)
Paris is such a tease: Go away, come closer. Must be beyond your reach, but oh what you’ll miss if you don’t try. Insight Guides doesn’t break the city’s flirtatious spirit; rather, it penetrates the veil. One of this book’s great strengths is its photography, lots of pictures taken mostly at eye level. Suddenly, you and Paris are on equal footing. Soon, you’ll be on a first-name basis with the artists’ easels of the Montmartre, the flower stalls and cafes of the Marais. The text comes in easily assimilated segments, organized so that you can get acquainted with the city on your own terms. Short side notes fill you in on the gossip. After all, if you’re going to flirt with Paris, you really ought to learn how.
“Cheap Sleeps in Paris” (Chronicle Books, $12.95)
The Hotel Residence Lord Byron is a five-minute walk from the Champs-Elysees, so quiet it’s listed in the European Guide to Silent Hotels — and so affordable it’s listed in this book’s eighth edition. Each listing tells you whether a hotel’s staff speak English, which Metro stop is nearest and how the bathrooms are appointed. Prices are reported in francs, a bit jarring considering the rest of the manual is so reader-friendly. But exchange rates fluctuate, and you can contact hotels directly; phones, e-mails and Web sites are given.
VIDEO
British Rail Journeys: Central Highlands
Nature invested some of its moodiest scenery in the bank that is Scotland’s Central Highlands. A train trip through the area would seem the ideal way to draw on that account. This video, however, bounces the check. We see trains advancing, trains receding, trains moving down the tracks. With such a focus on the train, you’d think there might be some mention of timetables, a description of the different car classes or directions for finding the station in each of the towns along the route, but there isn’t. We get barely a glimpse of the Edinburgh’s cliff-top skyline; but a few stops up the tracks we visit the Dewar’s whiskey plant to see the bottling process and to tour its nice, clean warehouse, stacked to the ceiling with cases of Scotch. Another tour is of a factory where they make glass paperweights. It’s enough to make you wonder who’s footing the bill. $19.95, or $79.80 in the four-volume set. From Acorn Media. (800-474-2277)
Poland in the ’90s
Every hour in Krakow, a lone trumpeter leans out of a tower at St. Mary’s Church. He plays the same tune as always, the same ever since the city rebuilt itself, ever since Genghis Kahn came through. There’s a theory about why the notes never vary, why the tune ends, always, abruptly in mid-phrase. Such information makes this video memorable. There’s a visit to a World Biosphere Preserve on Poland’s Belarus border. From Megamark Productions, $24.95. (630-960-1896)
NEWSLETTERS
Out & About (10 issues a year, $49 subscription)
Destinations of the year: Cape Town and London. Dogs of the year: Sandals Resorts and the Cayman Islands. Actually, Out & About didn’t call them dogs; the gay travel newsletter designated them as “rock bottom” because of their hetero-only stance. The 16-page July/August issue leads with the fifth annual Editor’s Choice Awards, naming 75 businesses, from airlines to restaurants, for outstanding achievement in gay travel. A focus on Rome, Florence and Milan takes the lion’s share of pages. Individual issue, $5. (212-645-6922)
Mousetales (four issues a year, $12.95 subscription). The “Unofficial Newsletter of Walt Disney World” spent four days at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and devoted seven pages out of eight to the experience. Reports cover some food prices and quality, describe attractions (and length of lines) and recommend times when the park should be less crowded. There’s enough information here, midst wordy sentences and grammatical glitches, to help you form a strategy for your own trip there. But the newsletter falls short when discussing how and where to buy tickets: They don’t tell you the price of admission, and they don’t give a phone number so that you can easily find out. Reprints, $4. (P.O. Box 383, Columbus, OH 43216)
Ogilvy’s Britain and Ireland
(six issues a year, $100 subscription)
London has this hard-to-find boutique hotel — in Chelsea, just 10 rooms — that’s owned by an interior designer. Everything in each of the individually decorated salons is for sale. In west London’s Notting Hill, there’s a new, hip restaurant whose menu, as Ogilvy’s puts it, “plays rather entertainingly on the British love of toast.” And if you plan on attending the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, do take a picnic; that’s the tradition. So says the 12-page August/September issue. Upscale advice mailed from Scotland. (888-OGILVYS)
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Toni Stroud’s e-mail address is tstroud@tribune.com.
