Planning a trip to Germany flying in and out of Frankfurt or into Frankfurt and out of Munich next May (5/18-5/28). We will be meeting our daughter in Frankfurt after her May study abroad program. She will be visiting Mainz / Heidelberg / Stuttgart and Basel. We do not really want to rent a car. Looking for suggestions on travel. Should we pick a base of operations and plan day trips or travel through out the region spending a night or two in different areas/cities? Thanks.
Mark
If you stay in the Frankfurt area, you can easily use it as a base for daytrips to all of the locations you listed above (although Basel would be cutting it). Munich's a little too far away, though. However, from Frankfurt without a car, you can easily visit the Mittelrhein, Köln (the single fastest segment of the German rail network links these cities), Mainz, Wiesbaden, and dozens of smaller towns and cities within an hour or two commuting time.
IMO, day trips waste too much time in travel back and forth. You can easily do Mainz from Frankfurt, but otherwise, just go forward and don't backtrack. If you have never traveled on European trains, it will be a pleasant and easy way to visit these places.
We prefer not to visit the cities my daughter will be seeing(Mainz/Heidelberg/Stuttgart/Basel). We want to either base out of Frankfurt and do day trips or leave Frankfurt and spend 7/8 days travelling and end up in Munich. Thanks.
Hi Mark,
I wouldn't base one place. Stay in 2 or 3 places for 2 or 3 nights each.
If you fly into Frankfurt and out of Munich, you could stop at Rothenburg ob der Tauber on the way. You could include a stay in either Garmisch or Mittenwald to your trip.
If you wanted to fly into/out of Frankfurt, head to the Rhine for a few days and then to the Mosel before flying out of Frankfurt.
Paul
If you use Frankfurt as a base, you can go on some great day trips to the towns that are only an hour or less outside of Frankfurt by train. This doesn't lend itself to going in a loop, as some posters suggest. Cheap, local transportation tickets are available for all of these places.
Consider visiting these towns: Limburg, Marburg, Büdingen (like Rothenburg but without the tour buses & souvenir stores) Gelnhausen, Seligenstadt, Idstein, Eltville, Kronberg, or Bad Homburg where you can visit a Roman fort that was reconstructed over a 100 years ago as well as the palace from Kaiser Wilhelm 2.
Head to the Rhine for a day and visit a few castles.
There are usually lots of festivals beginning in May, but I don't have the schedules yet. Frankfurt has enough to keep you busy for a few days too, whether it is their myriad museums, galleries, farmers markets, historic churches, or other historic sites.
Thanks. Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions if leave Frankfurt and end up in Munich 7 or 8 days later?
"Looking for suggestions on travel."
It seems you know where you don't want to go but have no specific destinations in mind. So in the absence of those I will suggest two areas with good diversity of activities and sights, places where you simply cannot go wrong - the Rhine/Mosel region (northwest of Mainz) and Franconia (in northern Bavaria, to the southwest of Frankfurt.) Both regions are exceptionally easy to reach and to get around within by train.
Rhine/Mosel: Think authentic medieval castles (like Marksburg) river cruises (Rhine cruise,), old-world villages (like Bacharach,) and great scenery (scene near Rüdesheim) - (Cochem.) The entire Middle Rhine Valley is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Mosel River is less dramatic but still incredibly scenic to explore by train.
Boppard is a good base town for seeing both the Rhine and Mosel. A 3-day pass for three adults in this region gets you around by train and bus and costs €44 total.
Franconia: Bamberg, Nuremberg, Würzburg, and Iphofen are among the very charming and interesting destinations here. Bamberg is an especially well-preserved old city with some great brew-pubs. Do a little research HERE on Franconia. Nuremberg or Würzburg could be a good base, but smaller towns (like the adorable Iphofen) would work well here too if you prefer. Inexpensive day passes get you around this region as well.
Würzburg and Boppard are less than 1.5 hours from FRA by train.
Hi,
Leave Frankfurt
2 nights in Rothenburg.
Walk the wall, Nightwatchman Tour (best hour we spent there!), St. Jacob's Church, Crime & Punishment Museum, etc.
3 or 4 nights in Garmisch or Mittenwald.
Plenty to see and do in this area. Visit both Mittenwald and Garmisch, the Zugspitze trip, Karewendelbahn cable car, Luge (Sommerrodelbahn ride), Ludwig's Linderhof Palace, Ettal, Oberammergau, Fuessen plus Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles, etc.
1 or 2 nights Munich before flight home.
Paul
Since Rothenburg has been suggested as a destination by others, I should mention that R'burg is in Franconia as well and could be a day-trip destination from Nuremberg or Würzburg (or vice versa perhaps, although its location at the end of a trunk rail line makes repeated day trips out of R'burg more time-consuming.) R'burg however is a tourist mecca where tourists and tour buses are shoulder-to-shoulder and certainly not the only place or the best place to get a whiff of medieval Europe.
"Does anyone have any ideas/suggestions if leave Frankfurt and end up in Munich 7 or 8 days later?"
Munich is your "big-name" destination but I would not necessarily feel compelled to end up there or to fly out of there unless there are specific, compelling reasons you want to visit Munich over the other options you have. What do you want to see/do there? It has much to offer visitors, but then it's also a sprawling , modern (you've seen the rubble it was 70 years ago no doubt) place that you can't navigate easily on foot alone.
We have a family friend that sings with the Munich Opera that is why we would fly out of Munich.
"We have a family friend that sings with the Munich Opera that is why we would fly out of Munich."
I see. Thought you had said into and out of FRA would work.
In and out of Frankfurt is still feasible. We have not contacted our friend yet and would not go to Munich if there was not performance he was in at the time we are visiting.
If you end up in Munich you can do the Rhine/Mosel - Franconia - Munich itinerary easily enough - you'd be using major train routes that take you very directly from northwest to southeast - it's just a matter of how many places you have time for.
Munich is about 2 hours from Würzburg by high-speed train, about 3 hours by regional train (which can be used with cheap day passes.) From Munich you will be 40-45 minutes by train from MUC airport.
I loved Bamberg, Nurnberg, Koln, Aachen, Erfurt. And Berlin (which I think your daughter might like), although that's pretty far from where you will be.
