Hello,
I'm currently planning a trip to France and Germany for June 2027 for myself, my husband, and our 11 year old son. I've been reading multiple posts but am a bit overwhelmed by all the options and trying to find the most efficient route for what we want to do. We will be traveling by train only since my husband doesn't want to drive. We're flying into Paris and out of Frankfurt. So far I've booked 2 nights in Paris (we have been many times before and seen all the usual tourist sites but just love to walk the city and eat the food), and 3 nights in Strasbourg. We'll spend one day exploring Strasbourg, one visiting Colmar, and one taking the train/shuttle bus to Château du Haut-Koenigsbourg. After this is when we'll be crossing into Germany from Strasbourg and that is where I'm stuck tying to figure out the best order to visit the areas we're interested in. We'd like to go to Heidelberg (to explore the town and castle ruins), and to the Rhine valley (to take a KD river cruise and tour Marksburg Castle). We need to end in Frankfurt since we'll be flying home from there.
I'd greatly appreciate any help in planning the Germany part of the trip since it seems there may be some backtracking involved on the train for these stops. We originally planned to spend one night in the Rhine valley to have time to do the cruise, explore some of the other Rhine towns, and tour Marksburg, and spend one night in Heidelberg to give enough time to explore there but we would also be open to just staying a few nights in Frankfurt and doing day trips to the Rhine and Heidelberg if you all think that would be more efficient. We want to maximize our time exploring and reduce it on the train as much as possible. If we do stay a night in the Rhine Valley, we're unsure which town to base ourselves in. Thank you in advance for any guidance you can offer.
