Hotel availability in Bacharach

Have you looked at the town website? www.bacharach.de
Click on GASTGEBER to get a list of all the places to stay. We stay at the privatzimmer Irmgard Orth. Small place with 2 rooms w/o bath and 1 room with. Great hostess, but she is getting up there in years but her father lived to 95 so I’m hoping she will be around for many years to come. It has been recommended by Rick. She has email [email protected]

Thanks Stephen. We've used www.bacharach.de with no luck. I'll choose a hotel, ad in dates, and their calendars show the whole year of 2020 being booked. Yet if I look at November of 2019, there are tons of vacancies.

You are very wise to spend a couple days on the Rhine! It's great place to relax and settle in before your tour.

The problem is you are trying to book too early. September 2 and 3 2020, right, with Sept. 4 in Trier, right? There is NO reason at all for these small towns to be booked solid on Wednesday and Thursday 12 months out! That hotels are not yet bookable is the only explanation.

Anyway, don't get too carried away with the idea of staying in Bacharach yet. Have a look at the other options first. If you are looking for a town well known for its train noise and its lack of river-view hotels, Bacharach might be just right. Here's a photo of one of the Bacharach establishments Rick recommends.

Unfortunately, Bacharach is neither a convenient starting point or ending point for a Rhine cruise since it's right in the middle of this route, which stretches from Bingen to St. Goar:

http://www.rhein-zeitung.de/cms_media/module_img/1195/597502_1_arslideimg_597502_1_org_bacharach.jpg

Don't misunderstand - Bacharach has the most attractive old-world buildings on the Rhine and some nice places to eat as well, and no visit is really complete without a visit there.

But you can visit Bacharach in just a few minutes from other towns - like St. Goar, a very strong competitor for the visitor dollar (or Euro, heh,) especially for those using the trains to get around. Rheinfels Castle is right there in town, so you can tour it anytime you like (while Bacharach has no castle you can tour.) St. Goar also has a ferry crossing if you wish to explore the opposite river bank (think Rüdesheim and Marksburg Castle in Braubach, an intact medieval castle with daily scheduled tours in English.) As you saw in the ferry crossing above and here, the view across the river from St. Goar is fabulous. And you can enjoy this view from several waterfront hotels in St. Goar (Rheinhotel St. Goar, Hotel Rheinfels among them; some have balconies.)

St. Goar's location is near ideal for short outings - take the train south to visit Oberwesel (5 min.) and Bacharach (10 min,) or north about 10 minutes to Boppard. And when you cruise, take ONE train to Bingen, then the cruise ship back. No multiple train trips needed.

Boppard is also a great town with many similar advantages - and a good base town choice as well.

Russ, that's what we're thinking the problem is as well. I realize that Sept 2020 is way out there, but even Jan-Sept are blocked out. Possibly, they dont activate their new year for a bit. Thanks for your suggestions, we are contemplating Sanct Goar as well!

A few years back we had trouble booking on most of the Rhine until the year started. Bacharach and several small towns close until spring. We got a good rooms and a quiet location at the Pension im Malerwinkel. We could not raise anyone until the year that we were going.

These small towns will likely not have many listings on Hotel referral websites. I prefer to use HRS.com normally but the Rhine was an exception for me.

https://www.im-malerwinkel.de

It has been my experience that hotels do not set their rates for the coming year until closer to the end of the current year. (At least the smaller, family run hotels which many of Bacharach are) Try again around starting in December. (that is the earliest I have ever booked a room for a September trip.) I have had hotels tell me they only take reservations X amount of months out. (The shortest was 3 months...I did not want to wait that long and booked something else). I highly doubt they are booked out every month!!

Mark,

As others have mentioned, it's too early to book hotels for Sept. 2020. It's highly doubtful that all the hotels are already booked in Bacharach for that time.

FWIW, I've stayed in Hotel Kranenturm (shown in the photo in an earlier reply) and didn't find the train noise to be much of a problem. It's an old stone building and the walls are about a foot thick. If you're concerned about that, there are a number of other hotels farther from the rail lines. If you have a larger bookstore or a Library close by, see if you can find a reasonably current copy of the RS Germany guidebook, as there will be listings there for reliable hotels.

I found Bacharach to be a wonderful place to stay, with a nice "small town ambiance". One afternoon I was invited to an impromptu 4th of July celebration hosted by the American ex-pats in the area. One of the locals provided entertainment with a guitar and the Pub where this was held had a BBQ with lots of food and "beverages". It was one of the special memories I have of Bacharach. There was another "special memory" involving a group of beer-guzzling teenagers on the train, but I'll leave that for another time.

I also found Bacharach to be a good home base for exploring the Rhine and Mosel. One of the day trips I took was to visit Burg Eltz. That was also a memorable albeit somewhat expensive day trip.