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Michelin Green Guide:
California
The Michelin Green Guide to California covers the whole state and is good on maps, the sights, major cities and towns, less good on hotels and restaurants.
Pismo Beach Sunset
This Michelin Green Guide California didn’t get off to the best of starts for me. Naturally the first thing I did was look in the index for ‘Pacific Coast Highway’. It doesn’t appear. Can you possibly write a guide to California without at least one mention of the PCH? Even casting our bias aside – I don’t think so.
Next I looked up a place we’ve been to recently: Cambria. Now Cambria’s a small place, so it doesn’t surprise me that it only warrants one sentence. But that sentence describes Cambria as a ‘languid beach town’.
To call Cambria a beach town is misleading. The main part of town is inland, and while it does have some beaches on the outskirts, like at Moonstone Beach Drive, Cambria is not a beach town. Pismo Beach is a beach town.
Looking at somewhere else we’ve been to recently, I turned to the section on La Jolla. ‘La Jolla,’ the guide says, ‘is famed for its boutiques, museums…’ Boutiques, yes, but it only has one museum: the Museum of Contemporary Art. The write-up for the museum says that it puts on temporary exhibitions drawn from its own collection. This is inaccurate too. They draw on more than just their own collection to produce their exhibitions.
Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla
Photo (c) Donna Dailey
Michelin Green Guide California: Maps
What should be made clear is that the Green in the title merely refers to the color and series of the guide, not to it having any green or eco agenda to it. Having got the nit-picking out of the way, what’s to like? Well, it does have lots of good, clear maps.
Michelin has a wealth of experience in map-making, squeezing and cross-referencing lots of hotels and restaurants onto city maps for their infamous Red Guides. In the Green Guides they work just as well, and if you’re planning on driving the Pacific Coast Highway you’ll find maps to places and areas like Downtown Santa Barbara, the Spanish Missions of California, Historic Monterey, the Monterey Peninsula (including the 17-Mile Drive), and several maps for each of the major cities of San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Hotels and Restaurants
Given how good the Michelin Red Guides are for hotels and restaurants, this Green Guide is surprisingly poor. In the Central Coast area, for example, there’s only one hotel recommendation for Monterey, and two for Santa Barbara.
Restaurants? One in Monterey, one in Santa Barbara, two in Carmel, one in Pacific Grove, and the inevitable Nepenthe for Big Sur. And that’s it – six restaurants listed for almost 250 miles of coast.
Hearst Castle Outdoor Pool
Hearst Castle, photo (c) Donna Dailey
Cities, Towns, Sights
The book does do a good job of covering the major cities, towns, and the sights of California, from Disneyland to Hearst Castle, from the National Parks to the State Parks and State Beaches.
With these, the guide seems to give a pretty comprehensive coverage. Hearst Castle gets two pages – just don’t expect any suggestions as to where you might stay when you visit. Disneyland gets seven pages and a good two-page color map. Death Valley National Park has about four pages and a map.
Is the Book Worth Buying?
If you’re planning on driving the Pacific Coast Highway and only stopping at major places like Santa Barbara, Monterey, Carmel, or Big Sur, alongside the main cities, then the book will be a useful companion. If you want to visit smaller places such as Cambria, Half Moon Bay, or Dana Point, then it won’t – they’re hardly mentioned, if mentioned at all.
The guidebook will also be worth considering if you’re also going exploring inland, maybe to wine country, Palm Springs, Yosemite, Joshua Tree, or Death Valley. It’s good on sights and maps, less good on hotels, restaurants, and smaller towns and villages.
Other books pages
Lonely Planet's Guide to Cycling the USA West Coast is a bicycling guidebook for anyone touring California, Oregon and Washington by bike.
The Napa and Sonoma Guidebook to California Wine Country is from the Moon Handbooks’ travel guide series with reviews of wineries,vineyards, and wine tastings.
California Living and Eating by Eleanor Maidment is a handsome coffee table book celebrating the food and lifestyle of the Golden State with 80 tasty recipes.
Greetings from California is a beautiful coffee-table book which describes the legends, landmarks and lore of California, including the Pacific Coast Highway.
Brewpubs and good beer are at the heart of the Good Beer Guide to the West Coast USA which lists the best bars and breweries from Seattle to San Diego.
Lonely Planet's Coastal California guidebook is the ideal travel guide for driving or cycling the Pacific Coast Highway from the Oregon border to Mexico.
Epic Drives of the World from Lonely Planet describes 50 of the world's most exciting road trips, including, of course, the Pacific Coast Highway.
Northwest Wine Country is a food and wine lover's guide to vineyards, fine dining, accommodation, restaurants in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia.
Lighthouses of the Pacific Coast, published by Voyageur Press, is a guide in words and pictures to historic lighthouses along the Pacific Coast Highway.
Some of the best California Backroads are included in Backroads of the California Coast, with 24 highly recommended driving tours off the Pacific Coast Highway.
Pacific Coast Highway guides include our own printed book and ebook guides to the best hotels along the PCH, available in paperback, PDF and Kindle formats.
This John Steinbeck California Guide, A Journey into Steinbeck's California, shows readers how towns like Monterey, Carmel and Salinas influenced the author.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel reviews the Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip guide from Moon covering California, Oregon and Washington
One of the best California coast guides is the California Coastal Access Guide, describing the coast’s beaches, National Parks, State Parks, with many maps.
The Best Coast is a west coast travel guide, sub-titled A Road Trip Atlas it doesn't use photos but instead has hundreds of beautiful illustrations.
West Coast Road Eats is a road food guide covering the Pacific Coast from California through Oregon to Washington, giving the best road trip food stops.
The Pacific Coast Highway in California book shows in historic photos the building of the Pacific Coast Highway from its earliest beginnings in 1911.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel's book review of Insider's Guide to San Francisco guidebook by Jill Loeffler, publisher of the San Francisco Tourism Tips website.
The Washington State travel guide from Frommer's covers hotels in Seattle, driving the Pacific Coast Highway, Olympic National Park, where to eat and more.
Moon's Spotlight Guide to the Olympic Peninsula covers hotels, restaurants, and sights, including Forks, the Olympic National Park and other places.
To John Steinbeck Monterey's Cannery Row was a place of sardine canneries, bums and honky tonks, but today the Monterey Aquarium attracts visitors.
The Los Angeles travel guide book from Lonely Planet also covers San Diego and Southern California, including Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, and Disneyland.
The Frommer's Guide to Oregon has good information on hotels, restaurants and what to see in Portland, and along the Pacific Coast Highway.
Pacific Coast Highway Travel reviews an Olympic Peninsula Travel Guide published by the Beautiful Pacific Northwest website.
The guide to California Bed and Breakfast Inns lists over 250 boutique hotels, wine country cottages and more.
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