3 Days in Rothenburg/Nuremberg?

6 days: 1 day is fine for Rothenburg. 5 in Nuremberg could include some day trips from N'berg to any number of good daytrip destinations... Bamberg, Bad Windsheim, Iphofen, Würzburg, Bayreuth, Regensburg are all worthwhile. But you'd need longer to hit all of those places.

I spent 4 days in Rothenburg in Sept. No problem. I much prefer a smaller town to a city

Rothenburg is a small town, Nuremberg a biggish city. Both worth visiting. Without a car, Nuremberg will give you way more options for day trips, including Rothenburg itself.

I THINK it might be fair to say that stephen and I have a similar travel style in Germany in several ways... a preference for small towns, for example, but also in the sense that we both tend to kick back for a few days in certain small towns that we enjoy calling "home", maybe a bit like aging dogs in their favorite doggie beds??

Rothenburg is a genuinely small town (about 11,000 inhabitants) - not sure how stephen spent his time there, but if he's like me, he probably spent some of it somewhere else outside the town walls. I sometimes take small to the extreme... on a recent trip I spent 5 nights in a Rhine-River one tenth the size of Rothenburg (just 1,200 inhabitants!) - a town where there was almost nothing to see or do. I had breakfast there every morning and 1 or 2 other meals there during my stay, but with my other daytime hours I either went hiking or rode the train to other more stimulating destinations. My little apartment had a nice deck where I could just hang out for a while, which I did once or twice for 1-2 hours, but the bulk of my time was spent elsewhere. It was a great time, but only because I had a plan in place for outings. And if you decide to spend more than a day there - or 4 days in R'burg out of your 18 total days in Bavaria - then I think it would be wise to have options in place for things to do elsewhere on other days. Rick Steves adores Rothenburg - so I opened my GAS guidebook to gather his advice, for what it's worth... He wrote, "Twenty-four hours is ideal for this town. Two nights and a day for this town is a bit much, unless you're actually relaxing on this trip."

Some day trips that might be doable from Rothenburg by train:
- Bad Windsheim / Franconian Freilandmuseum (about 50 train minutes from R'burg)
- Ochsenfurt and Marktbreit (old-world neighbor-towns on the Main River (also about 50 train minutes from R'burg)

We normally spend 2 days in Rothenburg as we like to take walks outside the city walls down to Detwang and the Tauber River. I would not be reluctant to spend 3 days in Rothenburg. There are many restaurants and cafes for relaxing.