thanks to all who responded to my rail pass question. Has anyone stayed in sankgoarshausen at Pohl's? I stay in Bacharach the last trip and wanted to try a different stop this Sept. Plan to use the KD to travel the rhine from sankgoarshausen to bacharach and back on one of the half day cruises. Any comments???
thanks
That is such a short trip between these 2 towns, that is hardly worth getting on the ship. The best cruise is between Rüdesheim or Bingen, up to as far as Boppard.
Sankt Goarshausen is a rather small town with not much of interest to see. There are so many other great towns to stay in along the Rhein, not sure why you picked this one.
Consider Ober-Wesel, St. Goar, Eltsville, Lorch, Assmanshausen, Kaub, or Boppard.
"Plan to use the KD to travel the rhine from sankgoarshausen to bacharach and back on one of the half day cruises."
Agree w/ Jo - the most scenic part is Bingen/R'heim to St. Goar/St. Goarshausen (1.5 hours.) If you cruise St. Goarshausen-Bacharach-St. Goarshausen, you see only half of the best part... and to do that, you spend 1.3 hours one way to Bacharach (very slow going in that direction because of the slow current) and 40 minutes back to St. Goarshausen through the exact same part you just saw.
So what makes sense from St. Goarshausen is to take the TRAIN first to Ruedesheim (around 25 minutes) and cruise back to St. Goarshausen. If you want to revisit Bacharach on the way, you can do a 1-2-hour cruise stopover there (check the limited KD schedule to make sure that's feasible) OR you could just start your day by crossing over to St. Goar on the ferry boat (runs all day long) and then break up your train trip south to Bingen (where you'll board the cruise boat) in Bacharach for 1-2 hours. Alternatively, visit a town you perhaps missed last time - Oberwesel is on the same St. Goar - Bingen train line and has a nice old town wall walk that you could easily do with 2 hours there:
http://www.oberwesel.de/en/wandern0/stadtmauerrundweg/
Using the train to get to Bingen or R'heim means of course that you don't pay any extra fee for the round trip cruise. And the train fare (E6.20) won't really cost you E6.20 additionally; KD offers a 20% cruise discount if you use the train to reach the dock. Just show your train ticket and you'll get about E4 off the one way cruise fare. So it's about E2.00 on top of the one way cruise fare - about the same as the additional cost of return supplement for the round trip cruise.
I haven't stayed in St. Goarshausen but I don't see a big problem with that... you are only a few hundred meters from St. Goar by foot + ferry boat whenever you like, and if it's OK to stay in St. Goar, it should be OK to stay just across the river, which is a LOT closer to St. Goar's town center than many inns with a St. Goar address. And St. Goarshausen is only 22 train minutes from Braubach, home of Marksburg Castle, the only intact medieval Rhine Castle you can tour.
BTW... The St. Goar-St. Goarshausen ferry costs E1.80 each direction. A ferry card good for 1 week is E11 and - passage is free if you are using a local VRM or Rheinland-Pfalz day pass for train travel.
thank you to responders. I had followed rick steves thought about bacharach to st goar as the most beautiful part of the rhine. I will rethink this area. I plan to fly into frankfurt and train to the rhine immediately. bingen may serve as a better stop. while i am here...a later portion of my trip will include Rothenburg or bamberg...feel free to weigh in....
gary
"I had followed rick steves thought about bacharach to st goar as the most beautiful part of the rhine. I will rethink this area."
Well, he identifies PART of the most beautiful part, at least. Rick's guidebooks cannot do everything and thus do not always provide all the detail that you might need on the ground... but beyond that his materials have often encouraged travel from Amsterdam south through Germany as well as overnighting in Bacharach - so it makes some sense for him to get his readers off the boat in the town he seems to recommend most strongly (which, somewhat inconveniently, is in the MIDDLE of the best part rather than at the best boarding or disembarkation point.)
A look at the materials offered up by day cruise operators provides a better picture. K-D Cruises runs 5 boats per day north to St. Goar - and they start those 5 in BINGEN and RUEDESHEIM because that's where public demand (for the best scenery) is highest (Service generally drops off north and south of this part.) The Bingen-Ruedesheimer line focuses their efforts on the same section of river as well. Here's a B-R map showing the highlights between Bingen and St. Goar:
http://www.bingen-ruedesheimer.com/images/map/rhine-valley290.jpg
Scene near Bingen worth seeing by boat:
http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/12303966.jpg
"...a later portion of my trip will include Rothenburg or bamberg...feel free to weigh in...."
Big difference. Rothenburg has an intact town wall and many nice old-world buildings. It's worth seeing - but if you must choose, Bamberg is the clear winner IMO. EVERYTHING in Rothenburg is oriented toward collecting the tourist Euro as tourism is the only industry to speak of. Bamberg has UNESCO World Heritage status for its medieval town center and has several interesting sights as well, but beyond that it is a university town, a beer-culture mecca, and a living, breathing German city where tourists don't outnumber the locals, where the locals still spend most of their day speaking German, and where there's more on their plates than serving tourists day in and day out.
Great response, Russ. You insight is why I can't wait to take in Bamberg!
