Itinerary Help- Rhine Gorge and Rothenburg

My wife and love Rothenburg ob der Tauber, despite it being very full of day-tourists. We stay 2-3 nights, walk around, especially in evenings. Very relaxing then. Of course take the Night Watchman Tour (it will be a new guy). And see the Criminal History Museum. And Kathie Wolfahrts Christmas Museum/store. But not a good base for other travel, pretty out of the way, especially by train. And a good walk from bahnhof to center of old town.

As for the Rhine valley, it's excellent for staying in a base for 5 days, and go up/down river by boat or train. No car needed. We like St. Goar, (Rheinhotel), but you'll get lots of other suggestions here. And Moselle suggestions. And favorite castles.

It will be glorious!

Is it possible to do without a car?

Absolutely. Both areas lend themselves very well to train travel.

The Rhine Gorge is formally known at the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. It's the area between Koblenz and Bingen outlined in pink on this map:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberes_Mittelrheintal#/media/Datei:Karte_Mittelrhein.png

Rothenburg does not define the local area as the Rhine River does. It's part of Franconia - Middle Franconia, actually. Then there's Lower Franconia (Unterfranken) and Upper Franconia (Oberfranken)...

https://www.freizeitfuehrer-franken.de/wp-content/uploads/Karte-Franken.jpg

So if you will be visiting Franconia, there are many nice places to stay and to visit. A lot of Franconia lies with the rail network you see on the map below:

https://images.gutefrage.net/media/fragen-antworten/bilder/459443150/0_full.jpg?v=1655930239000

Rothenburg is at the far left at the end of a trunk railway.

For "villages" to visit and to stay in, I would encourage you to look into these places, all just a stone's throw from Rothenburg and not far from the other towns listed:

Bad Windsheim
Marktbreit and nearby Ochsenfurt
Iphofen
Neustadt an der Aisch
Nuremberg (big city but with a lovable and walkable old-town zone)

Bad Windsheim has much to commend it including a wonderful open-air museum (Franconian Freilandmuseum) and a popular spa. It is central to the other destinations too. I would look there first for accommodations. I have used Neustadt an der Aisch for this area on separate occasions and liked it very much, but there is not an abundance of lodging options there.

This place - Ferienwohnung (which means vacation rental) Nebenan is very central in Bad Windsheim and offers different apartments in different sizes. Apartment 1 would handle the 3 of you easily (2 bedrooms, 2 double beds, 1 bath, kitchen with dishwasher.) It's available on many other booking sites like booking.com but isn't showing availability at the moment for whatever reason. If interested you might just send a note of inquiry to Katharina Wolf at the email address at very bottom of their homepage below:

https://sites.google.com/view/fewonebenan-badwindsheim/startseite

You will probably not find Rick Steves materials very helpful for gathering information on Franconia and its small towns. Consult Tripadvisor and other guidebooks instead.

As for the Rhine, I find Boppard to be well located and generally wonderful as a base town for both the Rhine and the Mosel towns as far upstream as Cochem. You will find many posts on this forum about Boppard and other places to stay and visit on the Rhine.

I don’t have a problem with the itinerary you have but I do have an issue with trying to do the Rothenburg ob Tauber portion without a car for the following reasons.

1. Going from small local village to small local village only with public transportation is not an efficient use of your time. Did a quick search on train travel from Rothenburg to Bad Windshiem, trains run only every hour. Going to even smaller villages, transportation will be even less frequent.

2. Assuming you are from the US and going to fly out of FRA back to the states and you were not planning on staying close to the airport the night prior to the flight, Have you looked at the public transportation scheduled to get from Rothenburg to FRA for a morning flight (considering you need to be at FRA a minimum of 3 hours prior to flight)? You would have to leave the night before no matter what you wanted to do.

For these two reasons, I would rent a car. If you rent a car for the 2nd part of the trip, might as well rent one for the 1st part and get all the benefits of it there also.

In my opinion, Rothenburg itself is only a two day visit/touring at most. You really need to figure out what you want to see the rest of the week before you make the determination on rental car vs local transportation.

I just don’t see Rothenburg as a good home base for one week.

I’ll agree with DKW that a week is too long without a car in Rothenburg. I’ve stayed 4 nughts a couple of times plus two shorter visits. Take a look at which day trips you will be taking and the times spent on the train/bus to do them.

Did a quick search on train travel from Rothenburg to Bad Windshiem, trains run only every hour. Going to even smaller villages,
transportation will be even less frequent.

The problem with basing oneself in Rothenburg has nothing to do with train frequency. Between 7 am and 9 pm, hourly service results in 14 different trains departing from Rothenburg every day. Nothing wrong with that at all.

The problem is Rothenburg's location at the end of a trunk railway... trains don't always go in the direction you might have in mind. They take you in only ONE direction, toward Steinach, where you must change trains to go anywhere. Thus, Rothenburg is poorly connected to many places, and certainly to other Romantic Road towns such as Weikersheim (Palace) and Dinkelsbühl, towns which are not located on Rothenburg's railway and which at most hours will take 2.5 hours and 2.0 hours to get to by bus/train. With a car, you can get from R'burg to either of these towns in 30 minutes.

Probably, it is the transport isolation of Rothenburg to these other RR towns which prompts broad statements like "you have to have a car to see this area." But in truth, there are many other nice destinations in Franconia, and the railway system is a GREAT way to get to them; just don't try to base yourselves at the end of a trunk railway, and don't swallow the idea that the Romantic Road towns are the only places worth seeing.

The solution is to base in a town which, like Bad Windsheim, provides good connections for daytripping. From BW, hourly service means an impressive 28 trains between 7 am and 9 pm, 14 in each direction.

I would also add that there's nothing inefficient or inherently wrong with basing in a desirable small town in order to catch trains to other small towns. Think about it. You can of course stay in a larger town (like Würzburg or Nuremberg) and do outings by train small towns like Bad Windsheim and Rothenburg. But these big base towns will still require you to use the regional train railway, where trains run hourly, in order to get there. And from Bad Windsheim, which lies in between, your ride to Rothenburg will be shorter than Nuremberg > Rothenburg, and your ride from BW > Nuremberg no longer at all.

Here are the VGN network maps for the RB and SB trains.

https://www.vgn.de/en/maps/network-maps/vgn-area

https://www.vgn.de/en/maps/network-maps/rail

As for Rothenburg ob der Tauber, I've visited it three times (1988, 2002, & 2017). One time I stayed for two nights nearby and commuted in for the day. The other two times I stay in Rothenburg for two nights. I would definitely prefer to stay in Rothenburg.

I've also spent 6 nights total on the Middle Rhein, 4 nights in Boppard in 2004 and 2 nights in St Goar in 2017.

I think there is a lot more to see in the Middle Rhein area than around Rothenburg. I would spend less than a week in Rothenburg and more than a week on the Rhein.

Oh, I did stop in Rothenburg one other time, but just for a few hours, not overnight. In 2007 I did the Romantic Road using only public transportation, buses on the actual Road or trains where they went between RR towns. It took me over 4 days, traveling just a few hours each day and spending a lot of time in the towns on the Road. In two days I went from Nördlingen to Weikersheim with stops in Dinkelsbühl, Feuchtwangen (overnight), and Rothenburg. There were only buses on that route.

I've spent 26 weeks on 12 trips, mostly in Germany, since 1988. In all that time, I've NEVER rented a car. I've always found that I could get anywhere I wanted to go using trains and buses. And most of my time (~85%) has been in smaller towns, under 20,000 population. It's a myth that you need a car in Germany.

The Rhine has been slightly shortchanged in the discussion so far.

With a week you'll probably want to take at least one river cruise, tour a couple of castles (Burg Eltz, Marksburg in Braubach, and Reichsburg in Cochem (Mosel) all offer tours and are easy to get to. River Cruises from Cochem to Beilstein are an easy and enjoyable way to get onto the Mosel River. These elements of your trip will work out best with some thoughtful planning/scheduling despite the fact that you are playing things "by ear." What takes little planning at all is using the Rhine and Mosel Railways. You'd do well with "Deutschland-Tickets", which cover you for a calendar month and will come in very handy for spontaneous regional train trips on both the Rhine/Mosel and Franconia. Koblenz is the nexus of the 3-4 railways you'll be using:

https://www.vrminfo.de/fileadmin/data_vrminfo/PDF/RLP-Ticket_streckennetz.pdf

https://www.seat61.com/train-travel-in-germany.htm#Deutschlandticket