Paris to Venice via Germany

Several years ago I did the ferry hopping down the Rhine that you are suggesting. I loved it!! Some have places to store luggage and others don't and I don't remember which ones are which. I was traveling really light so I was able to put all I had on my back in the towns that had no storage. That will need to be something you will probably need to work out when you select the towns to see.

Look at traveling to Cochem to see Burg Eltz.

From Cochem, your next stop could be in Boppard on the Rhine. You can use it as your base. From Boppard you can take the train south, then take the river boat back toward Boppard, stopping at various towns. Marksburg castle is nearby. In St.Goar, there is a castle that more of a ruin: Burg Rheinfels. Lots of cute towns to explore, especially Bacharach.

Trains from Paris to Germany are only efficient on certain routes. It's a bit of a PITA to get quickly from Paris to the castle section of the Romantic Rhine for instance. The fastest routes from Paris to that area is from Paris to Strasbourg and then doubling back northwest down the Rhine. Not efficient for moving toward Venice.

You could instead take the train from Paris to Strasbourg for a short visit, and then follow the Rhine the other direction to the east. Once you get past Basel, that stretch of the Rhine is very interesting. First three nice German towns (Rheinfelden, lovely Bad Sackingen, and charming little Laufenburg). And then another hundred-ish miles to the Rhinefalls and the beautiful swiss river towns Schaffhausen and Stein am Rhine. To me this stretch of the Rhine is easily as good as the more famous Rhine gorge.

From there you reach Lake Constance, and then a quick train trip up a valley in the Alps to Innsbruck Austria. From Innsbruck to Venice is about 6 hours train time over the Alps and down through the beautiful Northern Italian Dolomites and Alto Adige, with many historic cities and town to stop and atay along the way.

The route I describe from Paris to Strasbourg is quite efficient - not only is it beautiful and loaded with great tourist towns, but also a relatively straight shot on mostly high-speed rail corridors. It could be done no problem in your time frame. Trace it on a map and you'll see what I'm talking about :)

Have a great trip

The fastest routes from Paris to that area is from Paris to Strasbourg and then doubling back northwest up the Rhine

Disagree. TGV going to Frankfurt, but get off at Kaiserslautern and change to train to Bingen, where you can get to Rhine cruise boats to the Rhine Gorge and castles. Boats on the Rhine are not really good for hop-on hop-off, but you can stop off for a dau=y at toe=ns like Bacharach, St Goar, and Boppard. From there its a regional train to Mainz then change to an EC train to Bern. Bern to Venice is by trains to Milan and on to Venice.

Disagree. TGV going to Frankfurt, but get off at Kaiserslautern and
change to train to Bingen,

As far as I can see on Bahn.com, the majority of TGV going to Frankfurt pass through Strasbourg, on essentially the route that I describe. You can go through Brussels, but that's kind of a milk run. You can take the TGV to Metz and then four more trains north up through that relatively low population area to get to Bingen. There's one TGV INOUI a day in the summer that bypasses Strasbourg, 4 hours to Bingen.

And then get on a boat I suppose and head northwest to Bacharach or thereabouts. From where you are timewise now farther away from Venice than you were when you started in Paris.

Or you could blast straight to Basel on the TGV, and then start heading up the Rhine going east exploring all of the interesting towns in that interesting area. Travel toward Venice, not away from Venice. Granted that area draws more German tourists than American, but I do think it holds up to the Rhine Gorge as a place to visit quite well. In my estimation anyway. Without denigrating the Rhine Gorge, in my opinion after having travelled the entire Rhine river (and most famous parts more than once), the Gorge does not stand above some other parts of the Rhine for beauty or interest, nor many parts of many other rivers.

If one must have the Rhine Gorge, I suppose it is worthwhile to go the opposite direction of where one wants to end up to see it.

But anyway my suggested routing is just that, a suggestion. There's nothing particularly unpleasant about town hopping the Rhine Gorge, then seeing Bern Switzerland, then taking a train from there to Venice. I'm sure that would be fun enough :)

Of the five daily Paris - Frankfurt trains most go via Kaiserslautern. Unless they get deviated for some reason. So going to Kaiserlautern and continuing to the Rhine from there is certainly possible. But going to Cologne (which is also served by direct trains from Paris) is also an option. Cologne is worth a stopover in itself

Note that you normally do not need to second guess what the best route is to get somewhere. Let the Railway Planner figure that out for you. Go to www.bahn.de, enter "PARIS" as starting point" and wherever you first stop in Germany is going to be as destination, and let the system work for you.

OKAY, let's just say you've picked up travel4fun's tip on going to COCHEM. You boarded the 9:06 from Paris Est and arrived in Cochem at 13:17 (after just ONE change of train in Saarbrücken.) Here's an outline to cover the Rhine/Mosel region if you have just two nights there. If you have more nights, doing more is of course possible.

If Cochem looks like a nice place, well, it is. Drop bags at your hotel. See the attractive old-town zone. Take the chairlift ride. Visit Reichsburg Castle (right in town.) I am not going to assume that you are big hikers and enjoy long uphill walks to tour the castle interiors. Relative to other castles, like Burg Eltz and Marksburg, touring this one on foot is fairly straightforward. And a shuttle will take you up to the castle from town.

Day 2: Cochem is on the Mosel River. So this morning you'll check out and take a scenic 45-min. train ride along the Mosel to the Rhine River city of KOBLENZ. Change trains here for the Rhine town of BINGEN, the southern gateway to the Rhine Gorge, where you can drop your bags at a hotel (the nh Bingen is right on the river near the boat docks and on the riverfront promenade.) You should easily reach Bingen by around 11 am. Have lunch there, then plan to board your Rhine Cruise boat at 13:15 (Loreley Cruise with Bingen-Rüdesheimer line.) This boat gets you through the most scenic part in 2 hours and arrives in St. Goar at 15:00.

Visiting towns:
Have a walk around St. Goar (mostly flat) and board the 15:56 train for Bacharach (16:05) then have a walk there as well (also mostly flat) to see the town's handsome half-timbered buildings. Board the 17:29 train back to Bingen after that. Using the boats to stop in towns on the way is sometimes possible but usually impractical because the boat schedules are skimpy and the boats are quite slow.)

Day 3: Waking up in Bingen will make your train journey to Bern shorter than in most other Rhine Gorge towns. Still, it's a 5-5.5-hr. train ride.

Not to get too in the weeds, but I'm not "second guessing" train schedules and do use the German railway website as Wengen suggests. The routing through Strasbourg is the most common and generally the fastest to Mainz or Bingen. Of course there are other ways and some of them are about as fast.

But regardless of routes and schedules, it remains true that travel from Paris to the Rhine Gorge is going away from Venice. And my greater point is still that there is also great touristing along the Rhine going towards Venice. Opinions on the relative merits of given areas of the Rhine will vary. Mine is that the stretch before and after the Rhinefalls is preferable to the Rhine Gorge, with, incidentally, plenty of touring from town to town by river boat as well. They'll even drive you right up to the waterfall if you'd like.

If you do go to the Rhine Gorge area OP, it's a great suggestion to go to Cochem on the Mosel first and see Burg Eltz castle. Both quite special places.

Not to be pedantic, but "up the Rhine" as in going North, is actually going "down the Rhine" as in downstream. And vice versa. It makes a difference in timing and in discussing things locally.

Thanks Stan, fixed the one time I made that error. River runs north so easy to slip and call down up :)

Rhine Map

Hank, your views on the merits of the Oberrhein (Upper Rhine) between Strasbourg and Basel probably place you in the solid minority, but that's not my point. The OP's reference to the "Rhine River" as their intended destination is vague - it's a huge river, right? But Susan has clearly mentioned "ferries" that might take them to "various towns" as well as their intent do see "castles", which I think makes their travel goal pretty clear... They want help seeing the Mittelrhein (Middle Rhine) near Koblenz - the yellow segment on the Rhine map linked to above.

Of course it would be faster to head to their next destination - BERN - via Strasbourg and Basel. But neither of those is a "German town on the Rhine River," and AFAIK, the river-cruising and castle-spotting they want isn't feasible there. And AFAIK they aren't in a huge rush to Venice - they probably don't wish to skip their prior destinations - the Middle Rhine and Bern.

Oh my gosh Thank you all so much this information is great. I will get my map out and start reviewing all the options. Again thank you all so much for your suggestions. Susan

I get you Russ, thanks for taking the time.

Hank, your views on the merits of the Oberrhein (Upper Rhine) between
Strasbourg and Basel.

Oh and Russ the places I suggested are not between Strasbourg and Basel. The Rhine between Strasbourg and Basel is kind of boring! I've only passed through there twice by bicycle but it's kind of like a boring strip of canal through that section.

I'm talking about the section between Rheinfelden and Laufenburg or that next town upstream (Waldshut Teingen I think it's called?) that defines the southern end of the Black Forest in Baden, and the section between the Rheinfalls and the city of Konstanz that is mostly Swiss. Both are great 👍

Bad Säckingen, Laufenburg, Waldshut... a nice area, yes, no disagreement here. I've done shortcuts to Zürich through this area from the Black Forest and looked around a bit.

Take a train from Paris to Straussbourg, France, which is on the border with Germany, then visit the Black Forest (Triberg, Baden-Baden, Titisee) and move north on the Rhine up to Heidelberg.

Russ, thanks for taking the time to write that all out so clearly. I am bookmarking this for sure !!!

Susan, thank you for posing the question !