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Rhine River: K-D line & return. Help with details, please

Posted by on

I am having trouble navigating the K-D line website to find the cruising schedule. Can you all help me with a direct link?

I am trying to figure out timing of our very short visit to the Rhine River next month.

We will have a rental car. We plan on seeing Marksburg Castle in Braubach then Burg Eltz leaving from Rothenburg ob der Tauber early in the morning. (How much time should we budget at Burg Eltz? No plans for extra hiking. Also, any idea what times they do the tours?).

Right now, we plan on sleeping in Bacharach. I would like to drive in and do a late afternoon cruise, ideally from Bingen to Boppard (but if we need to cut it off at St. Goat bc of timing, I would be OK with that). My plan is that we’d eat dinner on there. We would need to take a train back to Bingen to get our car and then take the approximately 20 min drive to check in at our lodging. I am hoping that could still leave us time to do a wine tasting that evening in Bacharach.
- How long would the train ride take back to Bingen, and where can I find that schedule?
- There are 6 of us: I’d be willing to pay for a taxi back to Bingen if that would help make this plan work (but I’m assuming we’d have to get two taxis)?

I know it is a lot! Ideally we would have two nights there, but we only have one and won’t have time to do a cruise the next morning.

Thank you, ahead of time, for your help!

Amy DiChiara

Posted by
15 posts

Thank you so much, @MarkK

I have a few follow-up questions:

  • When I look at the DB planner, when I type in St. Goar, the options that come up are: St. Goar, St. Goar KD, and St. Goar Fähre. Which is the one I want to select (& is there any other way to double check rather than asking on here)? For Bingen, the choices I see are Bingen(Rhein) Hbf, Bingen(Rhein) KD, and Bingen(Rhein) Stadt.
  • For Boppard, I see Boppard Hpf, Boppard KD, and Boppard Sud.

If I wanted to try my luck at getting a 7-person taxi, what’s the best way to find that or request one? Is there an “Uber” type service or a number to call/site to go to?

Thank you!!🙏

Posted by
21993 posts

St Goar KD is the dock and if you put that in as your start point (getting off the KD boat) it will show you an estimated distance and walking time to St Goar train station.

If you put in Bingen KD, it will show you the route to Bingen Stadt train station, then the estimated distance and walking time to the dock (where your car will be parked I assume).

I hope you saw the notifications on this route, They are in German, but the gist is that there is engineering work on the tracks north of Koblenz beginning May 2 and trains might be delayed in this direction as they originate north of Koblenz.

To be honest, I think you are biting off too much with driving from Rothenburg, visiting Marksburg castle, then driving to Burg Eltz and touring that, then trying to squeeze in a Rhine cruise and still make a wine tasting in Bacharach.

Posted by
1877 posts

You are going to run out of time. It's going to take you four hours to drive from RodT to Marksburg. And that's without a stau (wreck). (I know, Google says you can do it in 2.5 hours. Maybe you can, on a Sunday morning. But not on a workday when they are doing construction.) Figure a minimum of two hours to look around/tour. Then over an hour to Burg Eltz, a half hour walk to, and from, the parking lot. Then an hour or more to get ticket and take the tour, probably longer as the tourist busses start at 10am and run until 4pm, so you have to wait.

Say you leave at 6am, which is going to put you at Marksburg when it opens, it's going to be 5-6pm before you get done at Burg Eltz. And then you have another hour, plus, to get to Bacharach. None of this accounts for meals, pit stops, etc.

Tours at Burg Eltz run every 30 minutes, but in English less often. Tours take 30-45 minutes. Groups are normally limited to 20. Last time I was there, last June, it was raining and we only had a hour and a half wait for our tour. There is no covered / shade space in the courtyard. If you arrive after they open you will be lucky to find parking in P2.

As for the train/cruise plan, you need to plan for time to get to Bingen. Since you'll be nearer Boppard, I'd park there, train to Bingen, and then catch the boat. Because the train is probably going to be faster than driving to Bingen. And if you park there you'd have to backtrack to get the car. You can get the train schedule on the DB app.

Posted by
7306 posts

You've recieved good feedback. Again. Back in 2020 you were facing the same planning dilemma for this same part of Germany. Too many destinations, too much ground-travel, too little time.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/germany/cochem-s-imperial-castle-or-cologne-s-cathedral

I assume Neuschwanstein and Rothenburg (and perhaps other Bavarian destinations) figure heavily in your plans and are constraining your Rhine-area visit as they were doing before. My previous advice in the thread above, which I will repeat now, was to drop all the driving and logistics which the Rhine will demand and instead do your wine-tasting, castle-snooping, etc. - or whatever your priorities might be - closer to Rothenburg - in and around the attractive Main River Valley. I'll add some new ideas to my previous suggestions on that old thread...

Sommerhausen
Marktbreit
Ochsenfurt
Würzburg: Residenz, cruise to Veitshöchheim Palace

Also: Bad Windsheim: Franconian Open-Air Museum (great for families)

Also not far from Würzburg, further down the Main River in the direction of Frankfurt:

Miltenberg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9nwkeiWgcU&t=9s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9nwkeiWgcU

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