Colmar Family Friendly Stay

You will find nice places to stay along the Wine Route, a much better option than Colmar. We stayed in Riquewehr at l’Oriel.

Michael,
Go to Booking.com and enter your filters for # of rooms, etc. to get a feel for your options. Also, 2 nights and three days says you are arriving early on day one and leaving late on day three. Usually, the forum recommends counting nights, as arrival and departure days to a location are only partial days, which would determine what you can do on those days. Two nights gives you one full day, and a half day on either side. (Unless, of course you arrive early and leave late as I mentioned above.) Figuring this way will help you decide on your activities while there.
Best of luck in your search and have fun on your trip!

Thanks for your reply.

We would be traveling from Wengen, Switzerland, leaving that morning, via train. We are considering renting a car at the Basel Airport, which is where our flight back to the US would be. So we would arrive in Colmar early afternoon. Below is a tentative outline.
Day 1: Leave Wengen in morning, arrive at Basel Airport approximately 1:00 p.m. Pickup Rental car and drive towards Colmar
Day 2: Explore Colmar, Haut-Koenigsbourg Castle, and Wine Region Villages
Day 3: Explore Colmar, Wine Region Villages, and maybe Freiburg, Germany
Day 4: Flight out of Basel Airport at 10:00 a.m.
So we have either 2 or 3 nights. We could drive the night before to stay close to the airport too.

With all this said, we currently have original plans to just stay in Basel 3 nights and train at least 1 day to Colmar. Basel is at least one hour closer to Wengen too. However, our Basel hotel can be canceled anytime too.

Please let me know your thoughts, suggestions, etc. I know this is a lot of information to take in. I appreciate all your help.

Go to Booking.com and enter your filters for # of rooms, etc. to get a feel for your options.

The same process can be repeated on AirBnB and VRBO to expand options. Some places are available on only one or two of these platforms.

Michael,
So, here is what I understand. Day 1 get car and drive to Colmar (about 1 hour) and stay there 2 nights You have about a half-day on day one, full day on day two, half to 3/4 day on day 3. Drive to somewhere near Basel airport on latter part of day 3 to sleep before departure on day 4. I wouldn't want to take a chance of being in a different country on departure day, even if it is just an hour away. Turning in the car may take a good while, so you could drop it off the evening of day 3. Just a thought.

Sounds doable. Make sure the car rental company allows taking the car into another country (I see no problem here) and you have all the special stickers needed for driving in each country. Get these ducks in a row and questions answered ahead of time.
Best of luck1

Thank you again for the information and recommendations.

Also, would it be possible to visit Colmar and surrounding villages in the Alsace without a car? My children would like to see the Haut-Keonigsbourg Castle too). I did see there are ways to rent bikes and also take a hop-on-hop off bus.

From what I have read in various posts here, there are tours from Colmar to the local villages, etc. Try putting in the above search bar "organized day trips from Colmar", filter for forum and one year or less. You may get some answers there.

Michael, in October 2022 I did a day tour with Alsaciette tours that included the Castle along with a couple wine tastings and visits to several villages.. There were only 3 of on the tour and we had a great time. They offer several full day and one half day tour.

You may want to contact them and see if they could put something together for your family that is a bit more kid focused.

I spent a week in Colmar without a car. In addition to the tour, I used local bus and the tourist Kutzig bus to visit many of the villages.

We also stayed in Colmar last September without a car, and used the Kutzig bus one day for time spent in different villages. Then we also took a day long tour with TourAlsace to visit villages and also the castle. That’s another company you could research. We had 1.5 hours in some of the villages, and the castle, and a bit less in others. In Ribeauvillé, we had the option of taking the little tourist train around town, which your kids might enjoy.

We stayed in an apartment in Colmar, so I can’t help with any accommodation recs if you need a pool.

Enjoy!

Laurie

My 2 cents. Went there in July 2022 with family of 4. Kids were 16 and 12.

Haut-Keonigsbourg Castle Was fine but I would not bother without a car. Bike, forget it. It was a really steep climb after parking the car, never mind getting there. It’s a nice castle but our time spent in colmar and western Germany was more fun.

Rental. It’s pretty late to book for July 2025. Go on to all of the sites and see what you can get anywhere in the area. Didn’t see many/any pools in this part of the world.

Other. Europapark was fun. Probably our 2nd favorite thing we did in our 5 days there. Colmar being the top.

Colmars two museums (the Uterliden and the Statue of liberty creator) were amazing. I’ve spelled them wrong but you can figure out which I’m talking about. Seriously, kids and adults loved them.