from Amberg Daytrip

Your stop in Amberg will be an OVERNIGHT stop, and your day trip will be from Amberg, correct?

Regensburg is 1 hr. from Amberg.

(BTW...You do plan to spend a bit of time in Passau, right? Quite a pleasant place if you can manage it.)

Thanks for answering Russ. We will be in Amberg for 2 nights. The day trip will be from Amberg.

Later in the trip we stay in Regensburg for 2 nights.

We will be in Passau a whole day after we arrive at night, and then we have another overnight.

What about Bamberg? It's a lovely and charming town with lots of walkability, some excellent restaurants and scenery galore. I spent a day there coming from Nuremberg and really enjoyed it. It's more a place you go for the atmosphere rather than any particular sights, although the town itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site due to its medieval layout and the surviving medieval buildings, including the cathedral and the Rathaus. It's an amazing place and I loved it.

It's a bit longer than you might like since you would have to train through Nuremberg, but not by much and it would make a lovely day trip.

I assume Amberg in De Oberpfalz? If you want something local, you could go to Neuhaus or Windischeschenbach for the Zoigl Bier tradition on a weekend. Probably need an overnight and that will not meet the short daytrip timeline. Getting there would be the problem too. You could stop in 92637 Weiden.

Kronach, Kulmbach
We stayed 5 nights in Lichtenfels. Worth a short visit

The disadvantage of Amberg is that it has good train connections only in the east-west direction. To the west is Nuremberg, which you know well, to the east is - nothing (ok, Plzen in the Czech Republic, but that's too far). Nice smaller towns to the west are Sulzbach-Rosenberg, Lauf an der Pegnitz (change at Hartmannshof to the Nuremberg S-Bahn to get to the station left of the Pegnitz, "Lauf links der Pegnitz") and (to a lesser degree) Hersbruck, to the northeast Nabburg and Weiden in der Oberpfalz (change at Schwandorf). Personally, I find Kallmünz, between Amberg and Regensburg, the prettiest among them, nicely situated at the confluence of Naab and Vils; in the early 20th century, it was the seat of an artists' colony, including W. Kandinsky and G. Münter (cf. his "Regentag in Kallmünz"; the Tourist Info at the marketplace is helpful). However, from Amberg there is actually only one practical connection with a train-bus combination (there: 9:35 via Maxhütte and Burglengenfeld, duration 1:15, back 16:12 via Burglengenfeld and Schwandorf. duration 1:08).

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I have spent time in this area and therefore have visited or stayed-in Bamberg, Kronach and Kulmbach. Good choices but I will look for something new.

I had little luck finding much information about some of the small towns in English. Thanks Sla019 for the links to German Websites. I can hardly speak German but reading brochures works.

We may just buy a TagesTicket Plus or Bayern Ticket and go exploring for the day. Lauf(Pegnitz), Sulzbach-Rosenberg and Hersbruck all look interesting. Then we could lunch at my wife's favorite Wurst Stand in Nürnberg which serves great memories.