Help! Itinerary Options - Heidelberg, Munich, Frankfurt

For option 1, can you fly back out of Munich? Would give you an extra day which
is pretty meaningful on a 6-7 day trip.

If not, I say go with some version of option 2. Stay reasonably within the domain
of Frankfurt. I think your day trips are too sequential. Move your day 5 into the
middle. You'll be happy to have a day when you don't have to get up early to start
a day trip.

While not everyone thinks this, if the flight is a bit later in the day, you could leave from
Heidelberg on morning of 12/7 and go straight to the airport. The train is less than an hour,
so a 7am train works for a 10:30 or 11am + flight.

Happy to help but I need a few more details for suggestions.

How many of you are there?

Are you planning to do outings by train or by car? Or open to both?

"Visiting family in Ramstein..."

It's not clear to me what day that's going to happen. How does that fit into your schedule??

What's drawing you to Neckarsteinach?

Heidelberg is OK, but I don't like it very much as a base town for 7-8 days in your #2 option. If traveling by train, the station you would depart from (Heidelberg Hbf) for the bulk or your outings is not in the old town zone, where most choose to stay, so every day you will have two additional built-in transit legs on top of your normal journeys. And although it looks impressive in all the photos of Heidelberg, the "castle" there isn't much and there are better options for touring, certainly.

Besides your stated interests... there are the Mercedes and Porsche auto museums, Speyer's Technik Museum... and of course history, art, etc museums that might interest you. Does anything else tug at your collective sleeves? There is quite a lot you can see on the western side of Germany - so generally I don't see a need for heading east to Munich and Salzburg in your short time.

@Russ

There will be 5 of us total. We're primarily planning our outings by train, but open to car travel if it's encouraged. Sorry I should remove the part about Ramstein- we're not planning on spending time there but that is the reason for our travel as my brother will be meeting us at Heidelberg from Ramstein. Neckarsteinach came up a few times on my research and looked like a quick and easy town to visit from Heidelberg but it is not at all mandatory, just one of the options I've found so far. I would say Strasbourg is a must on the list unless you would recommend otherwise.

You're correct we were wanting to stay in old town so that is good to know. Would you recommend Option 1 then or would you recommend option 2 but stay in a different base town?

We are open to museums, site seeing, good food, shops, etc. I personally have a love for architecture so I'm interested in cathedrals, castles, anything medieval, and would love love love to see traditional half timbered towns. We like big cities but also would like to check out some smaller towns too.

With an interest in architecture, you might want to see the Waldspirale, a residential building complex by Hundertwasser in Darmstat, very near Heidelberg