Best of the Rhine & Ludwig Castles

Cochem is smack dab in the middle of the Mosel Valley. Biking along the river is great, mainly on an old railroad bed that is now paved, sort-of.

Thanks Sam! Is this a doable destination? I was thinking we should go here directly from Frankfurt and then back track down the Rhine Valley. Or do you suggest another path?

Easy trip to Cochem from Frankfurt airport. Assume "We" is 2 people. There are clever ways (ie Lee ways) to save money on the tickets. Walk up price could be as high as 82 EUR for 2. There are ways to do it for less than half that, but that can wait for now.

Traveling back from there to St Goar, there are local group day passes for 23 EUR to cover both of you.

Cochem to see the Castle
nearby Rhine Valley (St Goar and Bacharach)
Baden-Baden or Mosel Valley instead?

From FRA travel to St. Goar and use it as a travel base for a few days - it's more central to the area where you will be sightseeing than Bacharach.

From St. Goar there are 4 castles you could visit and tour:

Rheinfels (ruins and museum, right in St. Goar)
Marksburg (fully intact medieval castle just across the river and north of St. Goar in the town of Braubach)
Burg Eltz (also intact, set deep in the forest near Moselkern train station - walk around an hour from there to the castle, or use bus on weekend.)
Reichsburg (right in Cochem)

Bacharach is about 10 minutes south of St. Goar by train. Do pay the town a visit. It has very nice old-world buildings and a castle as well but tours are not possible as the interior has been converted into a youth hostel.

From St. Goar, all the towns and castles named above (except Bacharach) can be reached by VRM mini-group day pass or 3-day pass. These passes are valid for the bus to Eltz on weekends as well.

Should you move over to the Mosel for some time there? It's up to you. If you have the time, absolutely. Cochem is a good base - you could do your day trip to Eltz castle from there and a day trip to TRIER as well (which is really too far from a Rhine base like St. Goar.) The Rheinland-Pfalz Ticket (day pass) is the one to use for a day trip to Trier.

Baden-Baden is a particularly weak base town for exploring. The station lies well outside town and requires a bus ride every time you leave and return. It's a sort of OK place if you're into spa treatments and casinos - generally you can do better on your way toward southern Germany by routing yourselves via Würzburg and Nuremberg, nice cities with lots of nice towns to explore nearby.

Reutte is strategically a good choice if you will visit the Zugspitze AND Neuschwanstein. From there it's only about 30 minutes to the Ehrwald station for Zugspitze access, and a couple of short bus rides to N'stein. If you stay in Füssen, it's quite a long journey to the Zugspitze access points. Oberammergau is a German option to the north - it also would split the travel distance well between N'stein and the Zugspitze access points.

BTW don't expect a real castle at N'stein. The 30-minute tour "castle" tour takes you through a building constructed just prior to the dawn of the 20th century - which is about the same time that the first high-rise buildings were erected in Chicago. That of course means the exterior, with all the towers and turrets and the rest, is just a mock-up, a sort of theatrical set that surrounds the fantasy-filled palace inside.

If tickets are not already bought, would you consider flying into Frankfurt and out of Munich so that you don't have to make a big loop?

Thanks all! We have bought tickets in/out of Frankfurt. Last year we went Berlin and looped around to Frankfurt. These are great suggestions. We would like to incorporate these places, which is why I thought Fussen would be a better base. Reutte seems hard to get to without a car, no? Otherwise I would prefer it so getting to Ehrenburg Castle would be more feasible as well as the Zugspitze.

Castle Hohenschwangau, Neuschwanstein Castle

Tegelbergbahn

Foggensee Lake

Lech River and Falls as part of a walk around Fussen

"Reutte seems hard to get to without a car, no?"

No. What makes you think so? It's a place Rick suggests as a base town for the destinations you have in mind. It's in Austria, but it's on a rail line famous for its scenery, and that rail line takes you into Germany, no matter which way you go:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ausserfern_Railway#/media/File:Au%C3%9Ferfernbahn.png

according to the travel guide it can be quite difficult to reach without a car, but I'll take the tip! Thank you!

Additional question:

...Rhine Valley down to Reutte..what place/places do you suggest to see as a stopping point in between? Looks like it could work with Stuttgart, but not familiar with the city.

Otherwise looks like quite a trip from the Rhine to Fussen area. Attempting to find the train path for this, but not seeing it...

Russ, I think I will take you up on the suggestion to base ourselves in St Goar and do 2 day trips it looks like for castles then head for Reutte as our next main base, followed by Muchen and back up to Frankfurt. We would opt to leave out of Muchen, but the deal we found didn't offer that.

Thanks again for the help!

"the travel guide" says Reutte is hard to reach without a car? Which guide, I wonder? Even without the train, it's pretty easy. Tomorrow morning there are direct buses at 8:13, 9:13 and 11:13 from Reutte to Füssen, each taking less than 30 minutes. The schedule in the opposite direction is similar. You can check the train AND bus schedule options at the German Railways page.

To find the train routings to Füssen, or Reutte, use the same webpage. Do your search and once the journeys appear, click on "details" at the left. You'll see the changes of train then. Under the "products" column click on the train number - you'll see a pop-up with all the stops made by that particular train. There is also a map you can click on.

It's a long trip to Reutte or Füssen. Do you plan to stop overnight? Or just a couple hours?

Yes we could stay somewhere for an evening in between or just make a long stop from Rhine to Reutte. Suggestions on the path?

"The path" - Once you check the DB site, I think you'll find it's pretty much the same for journeys throughout the day... St. Goar - Bingen - Mannheim - Stuttgart - Ulm - Kempten - Reutte.

I assume you don't want to deviate much if at all as that will add time and perhaps cost to your journeys. Stuttgart would split your time nicely. It's a world apart from places like St. Goar and Füssen!! Look it up online and see if there's something there that appeals to you.

Some places NEAR Stuttgart for you to investigate that might not impose a huge time burden for a side-trip and/or overnight stay:

Esslingen
Photos of Esslingen (and Stuttgart)
Ludwigsburg
Ludwigsburg
Besigheim
Besigheim

Thanks again Russ! Besigheim looks really wonderful and worth a quick overnight trip. Looking for accommadations though and those appear limited. Do you suggest any particular place or would you suggest sleeping elsewhere. We were simply looking to break up the 7hr train ride from Munich to Bacharach originally...

Appreciate all the help

Also, we are running into an issue with the rail passes. We did these last year and they were great! Good price, could make reservations and see real time updates with the app, and chat with their staff to help make reservations. We've calculated about 6-7 days worth of train travel which will be almost $800 for 2 people. Can we do it cheaper another way with better help?

"We've calculated about 6-7 days worth of train travel which will be almost $800 for 2 people. "

A 2nd-class German Rail twin-pass, flexi version, for two for 7 full days, is €416 bought from DB (or US$496.) Not sure what you are looking into.

Not to say the GRP is your best bet - I don't know much about the details of your trip. You can likely do better. See my PM to you if you want to pursue this.

"Do you suggest any particular place or would you suggest sleeping elsewhere."

I've never slept in these places (with the exception of Stuttgart) - only visited. Since this is a stop-gap layover I would likely want to wake up in Stuttgart the next morning to continue my train trip most easily - so I'd book near Stuttgart Hbf (main station) and take the most direct train sequence to Stuttgart Hbf from St. Goar. Once in Stuttgart, I'd get rid of my bags (at hotel or station locker) and take the short train trip to Besigheim, Ludwigsburg, or Esslingen, whatever appeals most.