Frankfurt 19-26 Nov - please suggest places to go that won't be freezing cold

You won’t freeze in November. Temperatures will be a little below Seattle temperatures, maybe dropping just below freezing on a couple of nights, but generally not much colder than you’re used to.

Your OP is puzzling, because Frankfurt to Nice is an all-day trip. Did you know that yet? Can you please give some more details, so we know this is a real post, worth replying to?

I should have been clearer. I meant go to Nice or Venice for pretty much the whole trip since it's warmer. But it seems now as if it won't be as cold as I thought, so leaning towards staying in Frankfurt for the whole week and making day trips (car or train) from there. So looking for best places to go, and best method/s to get to those places, and best permutations to combine more than one place in a day. Hope that makes sense. We're not into skiiing and would like to see pretty scenery / architecture etc and hopefully do things that will entertain an 11 year old as well.

I am puzzled by the broad nature of your question.

It sounds like you bought a plane ticket to Frankfurt, but have no idea of what to do when you get there. Why did you choose to go to Frankfurt?

Perhaps I need more coffee to better understand your query. With the snow flurries we are having, Frankfurt or Seattle seems like not much difference.

Have fun!

I think it's more and more common now, with international airfares very cheap compared to times past, for people to snap up great fares when they see them - nothing like an impulse-driven cheap adventure. Maybe that's what you did, m-mom?

"We're not into skiiing and would like to see pretty scenery / architecture etc and hopefully do things that will entertain an 11 year old as well."

It's possible to do day trips from Frankfurt, but for good scenery, you might want to move elsewhere. Not far from Frankfurt is the historic Upper Middle Rhine Valley, known for its heavy concentration of medieval castles and its old-world wine towns. You can catch direct trains to this area from FRA airport and be there in 1+ hours. Once there, the trains on both river banks will get you around nicely - the Rhine Valley is considered Germany's most scenic train ride (that alone should be somewhat entertaining for the young one.) If you wish to stay in just one place the whole time, then consider Koblenz, the area's train hub. From there it's easy to make day trips by train along the Rhine and Mosel rivers to...
Cologne (famous cathedral, museums)
Trier (ancient Roman city)
Cochem - besides the town and Reichsburg castle, maybe visit the Moselbad indoor water park as well.
Bacharach
Braubach (only 10 minutes by train from Cochem and the home of Marksburg Castle.)
Rüdesheim

When it's time to head from Koblenz back to FRA airport, you can either catch a train straight back, or stop off in one of Germany's nicer small cities to spend your final day/night in Mainz, the last major stop on the way to the airport (good place to pick up last-minute gifts as well.) From there it's about 20-25 minutes to the airport train terminal.

Joe: the difference between having the cold weather in Seattle, is we are indoors, snug and warm with our fireplaces and hot cocoa and not trying to drive, tour, sightsee etc - hope that makes sense to you. And we have to be in Frankfurt for job reasons, which is really only for a half a day. We added an extra week to have a holiday around the work trip. Thanks for your questions.

Russ: thank you so much for your replies and contribution, it's really helpful. That is the sort of useful information I was looking for. Thank you again.

Info on Frankfurt -

You should get a good guidebook. It will have much more info than people are willing to post here.
Lots of info on this forum if you look thru old posts, like this one.

Also checkout wikitravel.

Seattle is a little warmer than Frankfurt in November.
A walking tour is a very efficient way to see a city.

Although Germany has absolutely superb train services, we used a car on our recent (September, 2017) trip starting in Frankfurt. I felt that it was easier to see three or more places in a day with a car. Note that I am aware of the "Rick Steves" effect, a desire to see five major attractions a day! I'm talking about seeing several smaller places, like a Fachwerkstrasse town or the rebuilt Roman fort in Saalburg (which might interest an 11 year old.) But it depends on how "productive" you want your trip to be. If you want to see significant cities, a single daytrip a day by train is what we've done for years, sleeping four nights in one place.

We stayed in a fancy hotel at the end of an S-Bahn line specifically because we had a car. We used the S-Bahn to get in for a single day in Frankfurt (which certainly is "not enough") and to get to the HBF for our departure to Berlin. That is a very long train ride, but we were specifically going to the International Garden Show there, and going on to the Baltic coast. Interesting tidbit: Because our advance purchase tickets to Berlin were so cheap (and for a fixed departure) we had to switch to a taxi at the last minute. A passed-out drunk took a long time to remove from our S-Bahn at its originating point, Kronberg. We were afraid we'd miss our Berlin departure.

I use Lonely Planet books for local sightseeing on a trip like this. It's wordy, but just compact enough to be navigable when researching an area.

You bought a ticket to germany. You say that it is the first time you are going there, but you don't actually want to go to Germany.

Frankfurt is a great town. It is close to the Rhine, with castles, monuments, and great river trips. You can go to the Neiderwahldenkmahl and take the cable car to the monument. You can go to Leipzig, and see wonderful rememberances of the Napoleonic war (the real first world war). You can go to Heidelberg, Rothenburg am der Tauber, Erfurt. SO many places, so many castles.

I would buy some gloves, get a nice wolly hat, and look up Christmas markets in germany on the innertubes. You have a wonderful opportunity. Don't be frightened by a little tiny bit cold weather. Embrace the cold, and enjoy yourselves. In Jan, my daughter gets married, in SD, in Custer State Park, outdoors. We're gonna have a great time, as it will be quite cold.

You may want to check out the hot spring spas at Baden Baden. It is in a gorgeous area and your son would probably enjoy the spa with a wave feature. Think you would also enjoy it!

Thank you all for the incredibly helpful information.
This was not a planned trip, but a sudden job interview - that was why I was at sixes and sevens about what to do.
Lubitsch - thank you especially for such a detailed response, will comb through it today. Much appreciated.

Becky, Baden Baden is absolutely on my list. Just have to figure out the best means to get there. If you remember, please let me know which spa has the wave feature, my son would love it.

If you want a wave pool, go to Rebstock Bad in Frankfurt. Their wave pool and slides are great. Not as far as Baden-Baden. For a spa experience you could go to Wiesbaden or Bad Homburg.

I'm bowled over by the list of cities and video clips. I wish it had been available before we flew to Frankfurt in August, 2017. But I want to observe that they don't necessarily represent the experience of walking through the town. I like Gross Umstadt much more than the video suggests, for example. And you still have to do planning - it would have been easy to miss the "Altstad" road sign and end up (I mean by car ... ) in modern Gross Umstadt.

Rick Steves' TV show - Germany’s Frankfurt and Nürnberg

I really dislike that video of Frankfurt that Rick made. I almost cried when I saw it the first time, as it is very one sided and misses about 80% of the things that make this city great, like the medieval churches, the farmers markets, the festivals, the museums, the centuries old Jewish culture, and the beautiful, turn of the century neighborhoods that are everywhere.

The 2 videos that Lubitsch posted are much better and show the multi-faceted sides of Frankfurt that Rick misses. Thank you for posting those.

We enjoyed Frankfurt in May this year. My aged uncle and aunt live there, and my own family did when I was a child - in soldier housing. We visited the Archeological Museum. Due to a bank card issue, we were out of cash, and they did not accept our credit card. A kind gentleman paid our admission, saying that it was wonderful that we were visiting. Frankfurt is not the most picturesque town in Germany but we enjoyed it. We also found a very nice little street wine fest. So pleasant to have a currywurst and a nice glass of wine.

I think you'll have to decide between either warm weather or Germany. Can't have both in November.

November goes by the name of the "grey" month in Germany: foggy, more or less rain, no snow usually and temperatures below zero centigrade mostly only at night. It's not the nicest time to travel, but since you are in Germany anyway, I personally think you should use the opportunity and make the best of it and enjoy it. There certainly is enough to see!

That said, I'll have to contradict one of the ideas someone mentioned above: Don't expect Christmas markets to be open during November.

If, however, you are yearning for sunshine and warmth, you should definitely hop on a plane and get to Southern Europe. Make sure about the climate of whatever region you choose though – some regions do get a lot of rain at that time of year too.

The Christmas markets always start in Nov. Most years around the 22-23 Nov. This year they are later because of Advent being later.

These are the markets just in the Rhine main region.
* 23 Nov. - 23 Dec. Rüdesheim (closed 26 Nov.)
* 24-27 Nov. Medieval Christmas Market, Oberursel
* 24 Nov. - 29 Dec. Limburg an der Lahn
* 25 Nov. - 17 Dec. Bad Homburg, weekends only (closed 26 Nov.)
* 27 Nov. - 23 Dec. Frankfurt Sachsenhausen, City Forest
* 27 Nov. - 23 Dec. Worms
* 27 Nov. - 22 Dec. Rosa Christmas Market, Frankfurt Friedrich Stoltze Platz
* 27 Nov. - 22 Dec. Heidelberg
* 27 Nov. - 22 Dec. Hanau
* 28 Nov. - 23 Dec. Wiesbaden
* 29 Nov. - 23 Dec. Aschaffenburg
* 30 Nov. - 23 Dec. Mainz
* 30 Nov. - 17 Dec. Seligenstadt
* 28 Nov. - 23 Dec. Hanau
* 28 Nov. - 22 Dec. Esslingen Medieval Market

Well, in most towns, they are not supposed to begin before or on "Totensonntag" (Memorial Sunday) which most of the time is the last Sunday of November.

Anyway, since the OP's last day of vacation is Nov. 26 (=Totensonntag), that doesn't leave a whole lot of towns with Christmas markets being open before then.