Northern Germany Itinerary Help

You could just stay in Hamburg a and do outings to Lüneburg and Bremen from Hamburg. Visit Lübeck on the way to or back from Hamburg. These 3 destinations are quite good. Schwerin might be an option too.

There's no grand reason to head to Düsseldorf or Cologne if you don't want "new" cities. Both (and Hamburg as well) were mostly destroyed in WW II and rebuilt, much like other German cities. If it's "old-world" you are looking for, you'll not be visiting cities of that size but smaller places that were not strategic bombing targets.

https://www.deutsche-fachwerkstrasse.de/en/Homepage.html

This page has a list of old-world towns not too far from Hamburg with a map as well. Do some research on them to see if the meet whatever criteria you have:

https://www.deutsche-fachwerkstrasse.de/Regionalstrecken_Staedte/Von-der-Elbe-zum-Harz.html

This seems very rushed. Between driving and positioning yourself out at the airport, you are only giving yourself a partial day at the end of the trip for Copenhagen. Copenhagen and the environs definitely deserve more in my opinion. Same for Hamburg, from which you can visit Bremen, Lübeck, and Lüneburg. Those are all right up your alley of stated interests -- if you give yourself time in the region.

but I don’t want to be driving the entire trip.

Relocating to Cologne makes no sense to me. From Cologne back up to Copenhagen would be nearly a nine-hour trip!

I would forget about coming up with a third or fourth destination in the middle and divide your time between Copenhagen and Hamburg. If those choices seem too urban for you, pick a convenient smaller locale. But my advice: stay in the two regions and give them their due. Don't try to shoehorn in more.

When you say you've "visited a few times," do you mean Europe, or some part of northern Germany? Maybe we are just telling you about places you've already been to, in other words... which probably isn't much help.

So you are just staying over night in Hamburg and not visiting the city?
How about Luebeck?

but I don’t want to be driving the entire trip.

Sounds like that is exactly what you will be doing.

For that short time I would do one of two things. The first is staying in Denmark, maybe crossing into Sweden, but pretty much use Copenhagen as a base. You aren't spending any time dragging luggage from hotel to hotel if you stick to one base. You can still cover a broad geographic area. But you posted Germany, so I am guessing that is your preference. Still, as Hamburg's biggest fan, I recommend you stay in Copenhagen. You can explore the city, go up to Helsingor (and take the ferry to Helsingborg in Sweden) for the Hamlet castle, or cross the bridge to Malmö. That gets you two countries (if that is important). You can visit Roskilde or other regional sites. Furthermore, my guess is your flight out is early enough on April eighth that you will spend the night before in Copenhagen. So you really only have four full days on the ground, and there is enough to see and do in and around Copenhagen that you can easily spend the time just in Denmark. You could venture over to Odense, Aarhus, Billund (home of Lego if that is of interest), or some of the Viking sites if you are particularly ambitious.

My thought if you are doing Germany is to take a train to Hamburg on April 3rd. That's all you are doing. It is a 4,5-5 hour drive from CPH to HH and about the same by public transport, and driving while jetlagged is NO fun and certainly less than safe.

If you want Germany, I would use Hamburg as a base. You have huge architectural variety in HH, but you can easily do great day trips to places such as Bremen, Lübeck, Schwerin, or Lüneburg. Your trip is so short, going any further than Hamburg is absolutely going to make you spend the whole time driving. You don't need a car for that, either. Each of those is a very pleasant day trip by public transport--and they are architecturally diverse.

You would have the 4, 5, 6 in Hamburg. That isn't much time. Then you are back on the road to Copenhagen, losing the better part of a day on the road again. Of your five days, you have now spent two mostly driving through pretty but not particularly scenic or interesting countryside--the same stretch twice.

But if you really want to come to Hamburg, I can devise a pretty good personalised itinerary based on the interests of you and your kids.

And precisely NONE of those places has anything related to high rises or new cities.

Looking for as much art, history, culture, architecture, etc.. as possible.

You have a car, so there are so many interesting possible stops on a way to Copenhagen:

• Lübeck: somehow a historical and cutural must-have
• Schleswig: Gottorf castle and Haithabu Viking museum village
• Flensburg: bike or boat tour, brewery visit
• DK: Ribe - old town
• DK Bilund: Legoland
• DK Aarhus: old town and new lifestyle with art museum
• Copenhagen: plan 2-3 days

Just pick what you like most.

Thank you so much everyone.

It’s been years since I’ve been to Europe and as mentioned, this is trip is mainly to introduce European travel to my children. My daughter specifically asked for Germany bc of our ancestry and Hamburg is one of my favorite cities in the world. I’ve never really spent time in Denmark but now after reading through, maybe splitting the trip so it’s 2 nights in Copenhagen at the end of the trip would be warranted. I can use Hamburg as a home base for the other 3 nights. I mentioned Cologne only because my son is interested in Gothic architecture. That said, there will be other trips and we can always visitor it another time.

You can get traces of Gothic and history in Hamburg. You just have to know where to look and recognise that in northern Germany, Gothic is red brick Gothic. Also, tons of Neo Gothic. Mostly churches scattered around the city. The most traditional old gothic looking one is the remains of St. Nikolai, which only has the spire and the footprint--it is a really cool place to see both the architecture and the ravages of war. But you could also check out the Speicherstadt, which includes a range of blended styles of brickwork. The Kaispeicher B in particular is of interest, and it houses the Maritime Museum. Another place for your son would be Bremen. It will have what he is looking for. So will Lübeck. But with only two full days in Hamburg, even a day trip would be ambitious.

For architectural contrasts within Hamburg, you can look at the Treppenviertel, the Deichstraße, the Old Elbtunnel, the Chilehaus, the Rathaus, the Krameramtstuben, the Gruner and Jahr building (modern), the Elphi (modern), and the Composer's Quarter (quarter is a bit generous of a term ;) ). The various churches and the Speicherstadt are absolute musts for architecture buffs. I wouldn't
spend much time at the Landungsbrücken for what you have listed as interests. Just as a waypoint between ferries and public transport.

my son is interested in Gothic architecture

Northern Germany is known for Gothic brick architecture, so are Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and the south of Sweden.

Lübeck is somehow a must-visit (town hall, St. Marien church Lübeck).
Also the St. Nikolai church in Flensburg, the town hall of Bremen and many other buildings are gothic architecture.

If you want to see towns that came through the war unscathed, intact, not obliterated by terror bombing as was Hamburg in 1943, or raked by artillery fire, then in North Germany you are in the right place.

I would suggest Flensburg, Celle (north of Hannover) , Eutin/Holstein, and Lüneburg, one of my absolute favourite towns in all of Germany, have been visiting and revisiting it a zillion times, went there first for its museum as a day trip from Lübeck in July 1971.

Another attractive town in Schleswig-Holstein is Schleswig. Other than Celle these other suggested towns I have been to as afternoon trips or stayed in multi-nights.

I agree with skipping Cologne and Düsseldorf and especially cities in the Ruhr which have that ugly rebuilding style as can be seen in Hamm, Duisburg, Dortmund, etc.

North of that I would suggest staying , assuming you want to stay in a smaller place other than a big urban center, in Soest/Westf., the oldest town in Westphalia,

If you take the center route going north to Hamburg, I suggest then Minden an der Weser (time factor here) or as suggested above, Hameln.

A few years ago I asked my German teacher about Hamburg. He visited often since his wife was from a nearby town. He had good things to say about it. But when I asked about Lubeck, his eyes lit up and he raved about it. Unfortunately my planned visit was cancelled because of COVID.

Take a look at the charming town of Celle about an hour south of Hamburg. https://www.germany.travel/en/cities-culture/celle.html Perhaps you and your mature teens could visit Bergen-Belsen, the nearby concentration camp where Anne Frank lost her life. We visited Bergen-Belsen with our 13 year old after he’d read her diary and it was very memorable.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/baltic-germany-fachwerke-landesgartenschau

I can't imagine schlepping back to Denmark to return the car. Why not train to Germany, rent there if you require a mighty steel steed of traffic- jammed independence, and fly home from Hamburg or Berlin? You don't have the travel time to waste, in five nights.

Tim while telling the OP they don’t have the time to waste on a short trip perhaps she is facing something like this for her family of 4. Last summer the one grandaughter on a long, leisure trip to Europe booked tickets in and out an Italian city for $600. Her sister wanted to join her for the week she would be in Berlin as she had friends there also. Cost of her targeted one week trip in and out of Berlin was $1,800. Both girls flew but at such a great cost difference. Something like that could very well be a factor in why families choose flights in and out of the same city and travel away from that city.

Renting a car for entire trip

or

I don’t want to be driving the entire trip.

Which one is it?

this is trip is mainly to introduce European travel to my children.

Then why not introduce them to the wonders of train travel instead of being stuck in a car for six days? This sounds like a very rushed plan and given that you have mostly listed towns and cities I really can't see the benefit in having a car.

Correct Mona, the flights were such a great deal and that’s why this is affordable for the three of us. That’s also why I’m renting a car, my work has a discount code I can use. I can’t change airports at this point, I did look into it but it added so much cost to the trip, I can use those funds towards day excursions, hotels, and the great food.
Hopefully this is the first of many European trips for the three of us. Love international travel and I’m hoping to instill that in my children.
Thanks so much for all your helpful information. I’ll definitely use it when considering the itinerary.

Stonecompany I think when you don’t have a grandma who says I’ll pay for the cost over the $1,000 the older granddaughter was comfortable with paying, you do what you’ve got to do. BTW, the younger grandaughter paid for her own cheaper ticket and 7 week trip. She’d seen a $440 ticket for the same route but it had her getting to Milan at almost midnight. We all kind of gently encouraged her to buy the $600 ticket instead that got her there in the middle of the day. The travel gene is definitely strong with these two. I hope you and your 2 teens have a great time.