Hello! My husband and I will be in Paris in mid December 2015 and want to go to Munich and Bavaria for 2 or 3 days around Dec 14. We are looking at renting a car vs travel by train. It will be a round trip from Paris since we fly back home from Paris. Is December a good time for road travel or is train better? Why?
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
33857 posts
My comment has nothing to do with the time of year - it has everything to do with the extremely short time you have for that side-trip.
No way a car at 110 to 130 kph ( and much much less in Staus and construction ) can approach the ground munching ability of a high speed TGV or ICE traveling at 300 kph (or faster with the newest track and trains). And on the train relaxing instead of miles after miles of boring motorway "scenery" (usually an unbroken line of trucks interspersed with wrong speed drivers ) and miles and miles of construction.
Posted by
Huntsville, AL, USA
8319 posts
FYI: It's just over 500 miles from Paris to Munich. It makes for a difficult day of auto travel--and a bunch of tolls being paid in France.
Posted by
Danville, VT
12040 posts
From a scenery perspective, your views won't be that great in December via either method. The atmosphere in December is usually damp and days are short, so everything tends to look kind of gray. Go with the fastest method of travel.
Posted by
Denver, CO
796 posts
Right now you can get train tickets for as low as 39 each way and get to Munich in a little over 6 hours. The train definitely sounds more appealing to me. I'd rather spend more time in Munich than on the road trying to get there!
If you decide to go the train route, jump on the 39 tickets as soon as they become available on bahn.de. Right now they are selling them out to 12/12/15.
Posted by
Seattle
544 posts
Also consider flights. Mid-day roundtrip available for $138 from Air France and $148 on Lufthansa. The flight is 1.5 hours, so even with airport hassle it would be a considerable time savings.
Posted by
Mahone Bay, Canada
328 posts
I agree with the other posters, this really is too far to drive for such a short length of time - and I usually prefer to travel by car. Also, with only 2-3 days I expect you are planning to base yourself in Munich for most, if not all, of this time and a car would be a waste of money if that were the case.
I would suggest the train or flights, as mentioned by other posters if you MUST go to Munich/Bavaria but there are a lot of other fantastic places in both Germany and France that would be much closer and be equally as memorable for a 2-3 day side trip.
Posted by
OP
Seattle. WA
18 posts
Thank you all for your prompt and useful reply. I will look to booking the train as soon as it opens up for that time period.
The reason for this trip is actually to visit the Neuschwanstein Castle. I understand that there are plenty of other things we could be doing with that time instead. But we need to do this. So any other useful tip will be appreciated. Thank you.
Posted by
Puyallup, WA
34 posts
you might try booking it anyway.
i just recently booked a TGV ticket from Stuttgart to Paris (in Dec) on bahn.de . i didn't know about the <90 days out booking. when i clicked the final button to book it, a window popped up saying there was a "technical issue with issuing your ticket." after that there was a button to force the booking, and it went through. so you might get it booked anyways.
Posted by
(Berlin, Germany)
70 posts
From 13 December there is a new timetable. Unfortunately, that is not yet available on the DB website.