My husband and I are flying into Munich the morning of 3/31 and out of FRA on 4/10. My original plan was to spend a couple of days in Germany and then head over to Strasbourg, France to explore the Alsace region. I tend to research things to death and have a difficult time committing to a plan because there might be something better and I need to keep planning and looking. So, at this point all I have booked are the flights and a hotel in Strasbourg that I can easily cancel.
The decision I'm having the most difficult time with is using trains or renting a car. Last year in April, we relied on trains for Paris, Belgium, and Holland; I'm familiar with Eurail and buying passes and have read up on the 49 Euro monthly pass in Germany. On the last trip, we spent a lot of time in museums. We like to bike, hike, see beautiful old places, and eat good food (not 5 star fancy people though). Driving a car seems like a good choice to give us more freedom to pull over and do these sorts of things and to see more than tourist traps; however, I'm worried that we'll be stuck in a car the entire time and not like that. I planned on spending a couple of days in Salzburg and driving or taking a bus over to the highest peak via a cog train, seeing Augsburg, Colmar, and other smaller historical towns in Alsace. Recently though, I've learned about the Rhine Valley and its castles. This has me thinking maybe we should just stay in Germany and skip France this time. I'd like to skip recent historical points of interest and focus on the old world.
I'm looking for quite a bit of advice here so I'll break it down into numbers and want to thank you for even reading this far.
- Can we use the trains and busses as easily as a car for the experiences we're looking for?
- Alsace for 4 days or Rhine Valley?
- Maybe skip Austria for Rhine Valley?
Thank you
