Need help with Amsterdam > Rhine River Itinerary

I arbitrarily plugged the date of September 6 into the Deustche Bahn website and found a 6:35 AM departure that gets into Cologne at 9:12 AM.

DB indicates that there are trains roughly hourly from Cochem to Oberwesel. The trip takes about 2 hours and there's a transfer in Koblenz. The time appears to include walking from the port, a short bus ride to the Cochem train station, the two trains, and walking to the Oberwesel port. Time between the city centers would be about 30 minutes less.

I didn't check the ship options, but there are roughly hourly trains from Oberwesel to Mainz. Duration about 40 to 60 minutes. If you take a ship, you'll have to get back down to the port, which seems to be about a 15-minute walk from the RR station.

I don't know anything about discounts for rail ticket holders, but that sounds like a great deal.

You are describing an UPSTREAM river trip, which takes at least twice as long, with no additional value in sightseeing. Since the most scenic part or the river is between Bingen and Boppard or St. Goar, you might get time for other activities by spending less time on the boring or industrial parts of the river. The parallel trains offer inferior sightseeing, but very fast and frequent delivery to towns with boat landings. Note that walking will be a small chore with backpacks, unless you do the boat as a day trip from a hotel, which is what we did.

Cologne is a very attractive big city with great museums and Roman ruins, worth an overnight or two.

Thanks for the replies! Since the best sightseeing is farther up the river, I think we'll switch our plans and take a train from Cologne to Koblenz. Looks like those run around every 30-40 minutes. Then we'll take a boat tour from Koblenz > Oberwesel. Seems like we should take Cochem out of the plans also; seems like that detour would take a lot of time.

I tried to find the earlier train from Amsterdam > Cologne, but I'm only finding that train on weekdays. Leaving on a Sunday looks like the earliest train leaves 0805 getting to Cologne at 1046.

Truly grateful for the feedback!
Carly

FWIW, we stayed in Andernach because we didn't care for the hotels in Koblenz where we went for a flower show. That's almost like staying in Koblenz. We took the train to Bingen and rode the KD boat to Boppard, eating lunch with beer, aboard. We walked around Boppard, had a wine tasting, and trained back to Andernach for dinner. Biggest problem was broken ticket machines in unattended rail stations, and correct change to buy the tickets. Note that theres a KD discount with same day train tix.

Edit: I'm saying that we looked at the boat schedule and decided that the Koblenz leg was a waste of time.

As Tim pointed out, what you are calling "down" is upstream, against a strong current. The Rhein flows from the southeast (Mainz) TO the northwest (Cologne). Koblenz to Oberwesel takes 3:50 vs 2:15 the other way. The boat is very slow; you can't get from Cologne to Koblenz on the boat in a day. See the timetables at www.k-d.com.

This statement is on the fare page on the German side of the K-D website, but not the English side.

"Der Wechselverkehr Bahn/Schiff: Kunden der Deutschen Bahn erhalten bei Vorlage ihres gültigen DB Fahrausweises, einer BahnCard oder eines BahnPasses an jeder KD Agentur pauschal 20% Ermäßigung auf den regulären Fahrpreis der KD Linienfahrten."

"Customers of German Rail receive, by presenting their valid DB ticket, a BahnCard, or one of the BahnPasses at each KD agency [i.e.,ticket kiosk], a 20% discount off the regular price of the KD trip.

Maybe you have to speak German to get the discount?

The boat ride is only compleetely covered with a German Rail or Eurail pass, not with just a ticket, but by showing your ticket, you do get a 20% discount. I think you would also get the 20% discount with a Rheinland-Pfalz-Ticket or a VRM Tageskarte.

Another reason (getting the discount) to take the train to Bacharach or Bingen and come back down the river on the boat.

And Oberwesel to Mainz, definitely take the train. There are only two boats all the way to Mainz, one daily, one Th-Sun, July and August, and they get to Mainz around 8 PM.

If you get into Cologne at 10:46, there is an EC leaving on the opposite side of the platform at 10:53. You'd have 6 minutes in Koblenz to make a two platform change (Gleis 1 to Gleis 4/5) to a regional train. That train stops in Oberwesel at 12:25. The next regional train, to Bingen, leaves Oberwesel at 13:25, giving you an hour to get to Schöburg, check in, and get back to the station. The 13:25 train gets to Bingen Stadt Bahnhof at 13:56. From there it is a 10 minute walk to the KD dock. The next boat down the river leaves at 14:30 and gets into St. Goar at 3:55p. From St. Goar, take the next train back to Oberwesel.

Note 1: you might as well stop at Oberwesel and check in, because the previous boat from Bingen left hours earlier.
Note 2: there are two train stations at Bingen. In the direction you would be going, the first station is Bingen Hbf. You don't want that station. The next station is Bingen Stadt. It's near the river and a short walk to the boat dock.
Note 3: If you are seriously delayed, the last boat of the day leaves Bingen at 4:30p and gets to St. Goar at 5:55p, or you can go just to Bacharach and pick up the earlier boat from Bingen at 3:15p.

If you are going to use a discounted Savings Fare ticket from Amsterdam to Koeln and haven't already bought it, get it all the way to Bingen, with the EC from Koeln to Koblenz. That way, if the ICE from Amsterdam is late and you miss the EC, the Bahn will put you on the next train without penalty. As for the regional trains the rest of the way to Bingen, they are not specific for your ticket. You can use any regional trains until 10 am the following day to get to your destination.

Lee's post reminded me that Cologne will appear on German departure boards and tickets as "Köln".