2 Days in Mainz

I can't help you with restaurants in Mainz, but in terms of a boat cruise, it looks like KD cruises ends their season on October 20, 2024. Here is a PDF of their timetable, so feel free to look for yourself: https://www.k-d.com/fileadmin/KD_Fahrplaene/KD_Fahrplan_intern_2024_web.pdf I'm not sure if other cruise lines are available when you're there.

What you could do is take the train to Hatzenport, where you will pick up the 365 bus that can take you to Burg Eltz, a gorgeous castle with an even more beautiful view from the top. It is open until November 1. You could also head to Marksburg Castle as well, which is in the same area. It will take you about 90+ minutes by train to get to that area.

Day 2 we have all day until 6 PM. We would like to take a train/boat
cruise up as far as you think to see a castle and scenic city. How
would you suggest we do this?

First, I'd pack a lunch and beverages, as this will take most of the day.

Bingen-Rüdesheimer operates cruises within the Rhine Gorge until Oct. 27:
https://www.bingen-ruedesheimer.de/linienfahrten/linie/loreleyfahrt

1) Suggest you take the 8:36 train from Mainz Hbf to Rüdesheim (one change of train in Wiesbaden from 8:47 - 9:03) which arrives there at 9:35. Walk the attractive old town for an hour or so, then head to the Bingen-Rüdesheimer boat dock and get tickets for the 11 am cruise to St. Goarshausen (arrives 12:45.)

2) Walk north a couple of blocks to the train station. Board the 13:02 train to Braubach (arrive 13:23.) Then take the walk uphill to Marksburg Castle (about 25 minutes.) You should be able to get a 50-minute tour in and the walking within 2.5 to 3 hours.

https://www.deutschland-luftaufnahmen.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Marksburg.jpg

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g642094-d268085-Reviews-Marksburg-Braubach_Rhineland_Palatinate.html

https://www.marksburg.de/en/circuit/#/

https://www.marksburg.de/assets/uploads/Marksburg__Guided_Tour_in_Englisch_2021_.pdf

3) Trains from Braubach station at 16:06 and 16:36 will return you to Mainz at 18:01 or 18:22 respectively, including a change of train in Wiesbaden.

train schedules: https://int.bahn.de/en/

The Deutschland Ticket (one-month pass for €49 ea.) will cover this day and addtional travel days in the same month. Subscribe (and cancel) instructions can be found on this forum. Or you can ask a question about it and someone smarter than me will probably respond.

Thank you for your ideas very much. We are wondering what you would do for a day in Mainz.We are not big walkers but give it our best.
Gratefully

Are the wineries around Mainz worth
Heading too. Are they all quite different and scenic?
Thank you once again.

Please go to the Gutenberg Museum. It is right off the Markt. Excellent coffee and desserts at the Dom Cafe.

A Day in Mainz: Please review the top 10 things to do on the list of attractions below. It is a good list, IMO, one from which you can choose things that are in line with YOUR personal interests.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attractions-g187393-Activities-oa0-Mainz_Rhineland_Palatinate.html

Has anyone taken a day trip up the Rhine for a day trip to see any
of the castles? I found that the train has stopped October 20th so
I am wondering if there are tours at this time to go on the day trip of
the Rhine? Will the train ride along the river?

Does anyone know if the Markt is open everyday?

Thank you again for your ideas.
Helaine

There's so much to do in Mainz, and most people never see a fraction of it. To your specific questions:

Go see the Temple of Isis. It's in the basement of a mall (the Romerpassage), and the entrance doesn't look like you'll be expecting. It's across from the bookstore in case you can't find it.

Go up the hill and see the main fort (Bastion Zitadelle). Or just walk along the river and view the remains (and restored) fortifications. Even better stay at the Hyatt Regency, which was built into one of the old forts.

Go visit the Kurfürstliches Schloss, and don't miss the ancient Roman gate at the end of the garden. Across the street is another great building, which houses the State offices for the Rhineland.

The Gutenberg is everyone's major museum, but the Landesmuseum is really good. You know you're there when you see the gold horse.

Visit the Fastnachtsbrunnen (or as known locally, the fountain of fools). Grab a slice of leiberkasse from the imbiss there as a snack.

Go souvenir shopping at Oxfam, right around the corner from the (rebuilt) Altstadt.

For a great meal try Heiliggeist, one of my favorite places to sit outside in the summer. It's a church turned into a upscale restaurant.

Don't bother with the boat ride. If you must leave Mainz, take the train. Go to Bingen (RE2 or RE26 trains) and then take the ferry across to Rudesheim. There you can see a castle, and do your wine tasting. Or indulge in Asbach, the local brandy.

The open market is Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday in the square outside the Guggenheim and the State Theater.

St. Stephan’s church with the wonderful Chagall windows.
In Wiesbaden, the Nerobergbahn water powered funicular

"I found that the train has stopped October 20th so
I am wondering if there are tours at this time to go on the day trip of
the Rhine? Will the train ride along the river?"

I was not fibbing in my first post.

• The trains do not stop on October 20. They run every day of the year.

• There will be cruise boats when you are there as well. Please see the boat schedule I linked to above. If you want to take a cruise, there is no problem. YOU CAN.

• Yes, trains ride along the river on both river banks... not the whole way from Mainz, but most of the way. Between Koblenz in the north and Rüdesheim in the south, the trains provide views of the river from both river banks. The travel times I provided for both the train and the river boats are good for your specific travel date - October 23.

Click on the link below to see a map of train lines between Koblenz and Rüdesheim:

http://www.loreley-info.com/eng/rhein-rhine/walking-hiking.php

• Another poster suggested that you take the train to Bingen and then use the ferry crossing in order to reach Rüdesheim. I suggest you ignore this advice. To do the visit to Rüdesheim, the cruise, and the castle tour, and to get back to Mainz by 6 pm, you do not have time to waste. It is much, much faster to use the trains to Rüdesheim as I indicated previously (Leave Mainz 8:36, arrive Rüdesheim 9:35.) Rüdesheim is a nice town to visit and a good place to start your river cruise.

You asked about tours... If you do not want to visit the Rhine independently and are looking for a BUS TOUR, then you can check VIATOR or other tour companies online to see what is available.

You asked, "Does anyone know if the Markt is open everyday?" If you mean the market in Mainz, it is open Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 7:00 to 14:00.

I like the Restaurant „Bellpepper“. It‘s a restaurant inside the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Expensive and I like the nice view to River Rhine.

Around the Corner from Hyatt Regency Hotel is a restaurant „Beviamo“. Cheaper and I liked it. The staff was a little bit slowly, but friendly.

Last month I took the train from Mainz to Koblenz. I was looking forward to beautiful views of the Rhine. The disappointment was great. Barriers/stonewalls near Bingen, or large bushes very often blocked the views (Noise protection).

The Markt around the Dom is open Tuesday, Friday and Saturday 7.00 am until 2.00 pm. https://www.mainz.de/freizeit-und-sport/einkaufen-und-maerkte/mainzer-wochenmarkt.php

My suggestion, that if you want to get out of Mainz, you take the train to Bingen is not a waste of time as Russ seems to think. In Bingen you can visit the castle, Burg Klopp, do your wine tasting, etc. All without having to go any further.

https://www.rheingau.de/sehenswertes/burgen-rheintal/klopp

The train to Bingen takes @ 30 minutes from Mainz, and there's a train every 30 minutes. The train to Rudesheim takes over an hour, with a transfer, which means there's a good chance you'll be delayed with DB schedules the way they have been. If you do want to get to Rudesheim, the car ferry, which is the only one running right now, crosses every 20 minutes.

I really don't not recommend trying to take a boat ride unless somehow the weather changes; it's been cool and wet. Add to that, if you follow Russ' schedule, you won't be back by your 6pm deadline.

My favorite things to do in Mainz are to visit St. Stephens for the Chagall windows, the Roman Ampitheater, the Fortress next to this (both are at the Römisches Theater train stop) the Isis temple ruins, the Dom of course, and I quite like the Gutenberg museum.

"Bingen is not a waste of time as Russ seems to think."

It was not my comment that Bingen is a waste of time.

My comment was that it's a waste of time to travel via Bingen to Rüdesheim using the train + ferry... if the goal is to reach Rüdesheim for sightseeing and then cruising the best part of the river (R'heim being my suggestion for a pretty town to visit, and the cruise being one of the OP's stated goals.)

I'll stick by the train-only recommendation for getting to R'heim. Of course a train delay is possible. But there are a full 16 minutes of layover time in Wiesbaden to accommodate a small delay.

But what if the first train is 16+ minutes late, you say?? Well, in that case, another train leaves Wiesbaden for R'heim just 30 minutes later. So instead of arriving at 9:35 in R'heim, maybe it's 10:05, which would make the trip about 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes. And there's still time to get in a walk and make the 11 am cruise boat, as suggested.

With KGC's plan you'll...

• ...take the train (which may also be delayed, naturally) to the Bingen Rhein Stadt station (not to be confused with Bingen Hauptbahnhof.) Figure 26 minutes or so.

• ...walk 10 minutes south to the auto ferry

• ...buy your ferry ticket (€2,50, not covered by the Deutschland-ticket or other train fare)

• ...wait for the next ferry boarding (??? time unclear)

• ...board and cross the river (about 7-8 minutes?)

• ...get off in Rüdesheim at the ferry dock (which adds an additional 5-minutes walking time to the walk you'd have from the Rüdesheim train station, which lies closer to town.)

Altogether, KGC'ps plan in fact might take about the same amount of time as the train-only plan. But the latter plan lets the train do all the work for you without all the steps. And of course, there'll be less walking and less exposure to the elements... you'll be indoors or have a roof over your head for the whole trip from Mainz to Rüdesheim.

Bingen-Rüdesheim auto ferry, open deck: https://live.staticflickr.com/4133/5017917568_171a825a56_b.jpg

The B-R ships that cruise the Rhine are big, with outdoor and indoor options for passengers; avoiding the elements and enjoying the view simultaneously are both possible. One of their ships:

https://www.bingen-ruedesheimer.de/schiffsmiete/flotte/schiff/galerie-schiff-ms-rhenus
 
One cannot predict the weather. But October is not yet winter, certainly. Saying "don't bother with the cruise," in light of the OP's stated goal of cruising the Rhine, seems unnecessarily contradictory. Bingen isn't a bad place. But it's only a gateway town to the scenery of the Middle Rhine Gorge, and the best way to see it is a couple of hours on a river boat in the 25km or so of river which lie north of Bingen.

The train ride takes you through the gorge quickly and is not quite as enjoyable, but it's still "wow" and a good 2nd choice when there are no cruises available. I've never heard it called disappointing before reading that on this thread. This is well known as Germany's most scenic train ride. Of course, one must sit on the RIVER side of the train to see the river; the other side offers views of the rock walls of the river gorge. More tips for riding the trains here are available from the Man in Seat 61:

https://www.seat61.com/places-of-interest/rails-down-the-rhine.htm

A pretty good video of the Rhine cruise... watch it anytime, anywhere... in the event you accept the notion that it's too much trouble to travel beyond Bingen...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKnCUNIzDtc

Check the KDF schedules for river cruises starting at
Wiesbaden/Mainz and go downstream and then return somewhere beyond
Bingen back to Mainz.

The absence of scheduled K-D cruise options for the OP's dates was made clear in the very first response by Mardee. Cruises from and to Mainz ended yesterday.

There may or may not be a winter schedule for later October dates... I don't see one yet on the K-D site. If there is, it will likely be just one morning boat - and that morning boat may or may not sail, depending on how many customers contact K-D to sign up in advance. These boats only operate if there is sufficient demand on a certain date, typically, which makes planning very, very tentative. Especially weekday planning.

Rüdesheim can be touristy. I can understand why one might want to avoid R'heim when the tourists are there in large numbers. But the OP, whose goals include visiting a scenic Rhine town, will not find R'heim flooded with tourists; on travel date Wed October 23, a morning visit to R'heim will be almost tourist-free . It's a time of year when very few tourists visit. With a short walk of 30-60 minutes, the very attractive old-world town can be covered enjoyably on foot, without the tourist horde; if you had visited under the same circumstances, Veteran Traveler, the Drosselgasse and R'heim's other streets might have looked like this:

https://cdn.thecrazytourist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Drosselgasse.jpg
https://www.noordinaryhomestead.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/rudesheim-empty-alley-333x500.jpg
https://lieblingsplaetze-reiseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Strasse-in-Ruedesheim-1920x1440.jpg

The fact that Rüdesheim has so many handsome streets and buildings - and is also a great place to board a Rhine cruise -makes it a solid pick for the OP, IMO. The other option is Bingen, across the river, where the old-town zone is less than exceptional.

It looks like this company offers castle tours until October 27th. You'd need to take the train to get to the starting point, but we did that with the 1/2 day KD Tour, anyway (departing from Bingen).

https://roesslerlinie.de/schifffahrt/planmaessige-fahrten/ (The website is in German, but my computer gave me the option for English.)

I don't recall seeing Roessler get a mention on this forum in the years that I have been around. That's maybe an original find, BB.

Roessler doesn't cover anything downstream from Assmannshausen... They just do loop trips within the small Rhine zone which is shown on the flyer map below, which may be why no one ever mentions it. You miss a lot of the good scenery that lies to the north with such trips. No Bacharach, Oberwesel, Kaub, St Goar stops:

https://roesslerlinie.de/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Romantik-Tour-Flyer-2024.pdf

But maybe the best option, since the KD tours aren't available.

The best cruise option IMHO is the one I provided previously on this thread (Bingen-Rüdesheimer) which operates not only the Bingen-Rüdesheim ferry but also runs cruise boats all season long, all the way through October 27, through the most scenic part of the gorge - the same part covered by most K-D boats when K-D is operational. B-R calls it the "Loreleyfahrt" - and you can see the B-R cruise map for this cruise on this page:

https://www.bingen-ruedesheimer.de/linienfahrten/linie/loreleyfahrt

We are going to take a tour in Frankfurt but are staying in a hotel in Mainz. We must meet the tour
people at a designated place near the train station.

From Mainz what train do we take to go from Mainz to Frankfurt? We will come home from Frankfurt and need to be
back at Mainz by 5:00. How long is the ride? Is that the fastest way back to Mainz?

Thank you very much.
Helaine

Which hotel? Mainz has 2 stations. The quickest way to get to Frankfurt is to board a train the station closest to your hotel in Mainz.

If you are staying near the main station in Mainz... There are frequent direct trains from Mainz Hbf (Mainz's main station) to Frankfurt(Main) Hbf (Frankfurt's main station.)

The same trains stop at the smaller Mainz Römisches Theater station on the way to Frankfurt. The Ibis Mainz is one of a few hotels near this station.

Travel time is 35-40 minutes each way. Schedules and track numbers can be found at the DB website using the above station names:

https://int.bahn.de/en/

We will come home from Frankfurt and need to beback at Mainz by 5:00.

On Oct 23, there is a regional train leaving Frankfurt at 16:08 from track #20. It will stop at both Mainz stations before 5 pm.

If you aren't able to find what you need at the DB site, post your hotel name and the exact date/time you must meet others in Frankfurt for further help.

Those who replied on how to see the most scenic ride in one day from Mainz.
Is there things to enjoy in Rudesheim? or plan to take the 11 am to St. Goar.

Will going to St. Goar be far enough to go to see many castles?
Is there a funicular to go on in any of these cities?
Will we miss any scenery taking the train both ways from and to Mainz?
Which winery is your favorite in Mainz?

Thank you

Rudesheim has the cable car over the vineyards to the Niederwald monument, Siegfried’s mechanical Musical museum

I also highly recommend the Gutenberg museum! Don't miss the Mainz cathedral, the cute Old town around the corner and St Stepens church with the Marc.Chagall blue windows!

Yes, St. Goar is far enough to see most of the castles. No, there are no funiculars at any of these towns. Rüdesheim has the gondola ride until end of Oct.
For wine tasting, I think RheinWeinWelt in Rüdesheim is the most fun. Everyone I know who has gone there has loved that you can try 10 different wines from the Rheingau region for just 12€. https://www.rheinweinwelt.de/en/

I really liked Mainz. Any churches there are cool. There is the temple of isis/magna mater inside of a mall that is VERY well done. The roman amphitheater is a nice site too and is right behind a train station (however you have to follow a longish trail to get to it due to construction but it is well worth it. Its also on the way to the citadel. You can see the old roman towers up there as well. There are quite a few little roman sites splattered around the city. I didnt get a chance to see the history/archeological museum but from what I saw when researching it looked great.

Food wise? I really didnt have a problem finding food anywhere I was in the entire country. Of course some were better than others, but I didnt go to a restaurant that made me go " why did I come here". A bit of advice would be to look around the main squares. While in most cased id advice against going to restaurants in these places, in my experience the prices werent much different and the food was good. Its a gorgeous little city though. Lots of nice views and the people were super nice. Great churches (cant go wrong and you cant miss them either).