Best use of 14 full days in Bavaria/Rhine Valley

With 14 days, I think this is doable. In 1988, I went south from Munich and up the Zugspitze, and back, in a day. In 2002 my wife and I went to Salzburg for the day - doable. Neuschwanstein is doable in a day if you plan. Spend a few days in Munich, there is a lot to see there. I, too, prefer small towns, but I think basing in Munich for Neuschwanstein, Zugspitze, Salzburg works best. As far as the Rhein/Mosel, there is basically nothing there but small towns.

lee...would you base yourself in munich and do day trips, or do overnights in the surrounding areas? and good to know that it is doable. we were thinking of scratching salzburg entirely, but perhaps we won't need to do that. i'll be playing around with dates tonight. thanks!

On a very cold day in January, we left an eastern suburb of Munich with a Bayern Ticket and got to Salzburg before lunch. We stopped at Meribelle Palace where we sang do-re-mi on the steps, then went on to the old town for lunch. Afterward we found the Residenz, where they flew the nazi flag, the square where Maria boarded the bus, and the church. We went up the incline for a tour of the Fortress, then came down the front and went around to the Abbey. We were back in Munich for a late dinner. Not bad for a day. I wouldn't skip Salzburg, but I wouldn't waste my time with a SOM tour.

"would you base yourself in munich and do day trips, or do overnights in the surrounding areas?" I guess that depends a lot on your level of experience. It's nice to be able to leave all of your stuff in the room for the day, go off somewhere, and come back that night. It requires extra travel time, but moving everyday, taking your luggage with you, requires a little more planning and can be stressful. You might consider going to Garmisch-Partenkirchen and the Zugspitze, spending the night in Oberammergau, and going to Hohenschwangau in the morning with the bus.

oh good. i was not thrilled about having to strike salzburg from the trip. clearly it is doable. thanks! also, that last sentence helped a lot. i was struggling with how to best design that part of the trip. thanks yet again! i still don't know how i feel about a home base vs. moving around. we pack very lightly, so luggage is really not an issue. but i see your point, and i agree that moving around a lot is stressful. because of this, i'd like to avoid one night stays. my current plan looks like this: Munich: 3 Nights Fussen or Reutte or Pinswang: 4 Nights (the latter bc i like the RS recommended guest house; it seems peaceful) Rothenburg: 2 Nights Bacharach: 4 Nights munich plans: RS walk for overview, day spent in english garden on bikes, salzburg side trip (sans SOM tour!) bavaria plans: castles and mountain rothenburg plans: not sure why i added this? because it is on the way, perhaps? removable to allow for more time elsewhere.
bacharach plans: rhine/mosel cruises; burg elz clearly i have some work to do.

1. Take a few nights off Füssen for Munich and include Salzburg. 2. Reconsider Reutte/Pinswang for Pfronten. I changed trains and had lunch in Reutte last year and I was not at all impressed. Pfronten has a lot of much nicer places and better connections to Füssen.

If you are in Salzburg, you must go to the Augustiner Braustubl for pork knuckle and beer. What a treat. Don't miss Andechs Monastery for beer, wieswurst and kraut.
Andechs is less than an hour by car from Munich. Enjoy.

lee...i had a 'rest day' in fussen that i can delete, so as to add a day to munich and/or include salzburg. i will research pfronten. thanks! dave...pork knuckle and beer, beer wurst and kraut...it seems like you must have met my husband! i will research andechs. thank you! side note: we just watched the RS salzburg episode, and i became enamored by hallstatt. but alas, my husband feels (and i agree) that i'm getting a bit carried away distance wise.

Hallstatt is lovely, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I mentioned Pfronten because it is only a few miles from Reutte, better connected by bus to Fuessen, and a beautiful town.

yes, the line is definitely drawn! we're now looking at apartment rentals in munich, as your suggestion to base our travels out of munich and do day trips seems like it makes the most financial sense, provided we rent an apartment. this would also save money by allowing us to just use trains and not have to rent a car. we'd then basically have a three part trip: munich and side trips, a few days on the rhine, amsterdam and side trips. ah decisions decisions!

Basing in Munich and doing day trips to everywhere South of there makes sense to me. Only exception would be to consider two nights in Garmish to see the area around there . Up the omantic Road to Frankfurt for the Rhine (stop a couple of nights in rothenberg along the way), and then rhine and Moselle.

Instead of stopping in busy, full Rothenburg, consider staying in Büdingen. This is also an original walled town, only an hour away from Frankfurt, but with no tourist buses and no souvenir stores. If you like hiking, think about staying in the Taunus mountains in Kronberg or Bad Homburg. They have quick train connections to Frankfurt and tons of hiking trails as well as lots of Roman ruins including the Saalburg, the palace of the Kaiser in Bad Homburg and lovely original castle built in the 1200's in Kronberg. Lots of fachwerk houses around here too.

We spent a few days each on both the Mosel (home base: Zell) and the Rhine (home base: Bacharach) and personally MUCH prefered the Mosel. It just seemed like a sleepier river (complete with swans) set amid tons of vineyards and dotted with small towns. The Rhine, of course, is dotted with small towns but it all seemed to be a lot more industrial-feeling. It helped that our hotel room in Zell (Hotel Weinhaus Mayer) was right along the river and had a balcony with a beautiful view. We spent our evenings with a bottle of wine from the hotel's vineyard, watching the river traffic float by. I know you will be doing a ton of research and making many revisions to your itinerary, and I'd encourage you to suss out the merits of both the Rhine and Mosel before deciding on a home base for the general area. PS We had a car and wouldn't have done it any other way. This, however, was in May, and I have no idea what the traffic/parking situation would be like in mid-summer.

Angela...that is exactly what we need to do. I like your description of where you stayed. That's the kind of experience we are looking for. Thanks!!! EDIT: I wrote that on my phone while out and about today, but since I've returned home and did some research. That hotel is exactly what we're looking for, and very reasonably priced. Thanks!!!!!! One question though...did you have a car? I'm leaning towards trying to avoid a car rental. I just don't know if I'd be comfortable driving in Germany (though I keep going back and forth on this!)

When it comes to the issue of making transitions from place to place I think it would be wise to keep in mind the difference between urban vs rural here, too. We all know that fewer transitions and staying longer in one place is generally a better experience, but is the definition of "longer" and "fewer" the same for both urban and rural? I don't think so. If I were facing a transition from one large city to another I would want to stay between 4 days and a week in each location because getting to know a city takes more time and is MUCH more stressful. But if I am going from one small town stay to another, 2 or 3 nights is fine. You can feel "at home" in a small town in a few hours. I would rather become "at home" in a small town near a major attraction than see that attraction as a lengthy day trip from a city. You have 14 days. That's a lot of time in an area the size of Wisconsin. I don't think you need to fret about rushing too much (Oh how I wish I could say that more often here on this board!). You could spend 3 nights in almost five different locations, or 4-4-3-3 in four different locations. No problem. Plenty of time to adopt several new "homes".

randy...fantastic point. what i think i also need to do is take the lessons from our last trip into account. for example, we loved bath. we took the first train in the morning out of london, and it was great being there before the day trip crowds. we also took one of the last trains back at night. also great. one of the most relaxing moments of the trip was just hanging out in the pub at sunset (it was a pub with lots of windows...oddly.) our only regret was not staying in bath overnight (as we eventually did have to catch a train, causing us to not be able to do the bizarre bath tour; though we did watch the beginning of it from the window of the pub!)

Tracy, you can get by without renting a car (I did). It might take a little planning and might take a little longer, but you will save a lot of money. There are buses from the main train line to the small towns on the river. In 2008, I spent three days (4 nights) touring on the Mosel using public transportation. I saw Berkastel-Kues, Zell, Cochem, and Beilstein) Overall, I spent less than €30 (€10/day, for one) for tickets

Lee...did you buy train tickets in advance or at the station? that's an impressively small amount of money! we were thinking of doing a rail pass, though i know they are wasteful money-wise, just to make it easier. but i do have...counting...almost six months to figure this out, so i shouldn't need it to be 'easier'! and we do have more time than money.

On the day I went to Berkastel-Kues and Zell, I used a Rheinland-Pfalz-Ticket for the train and buses because Bernkastel is outside of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Main. At the time it was €18 for one person. Today it is €21 for the first person, €3 more for the second. I was staying in a Privatzimmer in the small town of Treis-Karden, just down the river from Cochem, because Cochem was having their annual Federweis wine festival and no one seemed to want to rent to a single person. (Funny, when I got to Cochem there were plenty of "Zimmer Frei" signs out all over town.) Second day, when I went into Cochem to see the Reichsburg and visited Rademacher Weingut, it was a €5,80 RT ticket with the train. Similarly, the last day, Beilstein, was a €5,80 local ticket by train and bus. I bought all of my tickets the day of travel at the station automat. Had I been able to stay in Cochem, my transportation would have been even less.

Wow--that's fantastic! Thanks for the details. The thought of a rail pass is forgotten.

Tracy, to answer your question, yes, we had a car. While we likely could have done the trip using only public transportation (and generally travel in Europe that way), we felt a car best suited our needs for this trip. With the car we were able to make all kinds of unplanned detours. Among the many detours (and one of the best days of our trip) was when we decided the Rhine wasn't for us and we day-tripped to Strasbourg in the morning (we knew nothing about Strasbourg - or even where it was located - but had seen a TV show about it in German a few nights prior and thought it looked cool. A couple days and one internet search later...), then drove back north through the Black Forest, had dinner and a funicular ride in Baden-Baden, and then got back to Bacharach at night. That type of day was totally unplanned and might make some people's heads roll, but we had an absolute blast. By the way, we learned we would like to spend more time on a future trip in the Black Forest area. The next day we ditched the Rhine (and, by this point, our itinerary) completely, hopped into the car and went to Heidelberg on a whim. Another blast ensued. BUT, as I said above, this worked well for us and our travel style. And it was in May, not mid-summer. If you are seriously considering a car, I'd try to find out what people's experiences were like with traffic and parking in summer. It could be that it is a complete nightmare, with traffic backed up for miles along the little roads that wind alongside the rivers and no parking anywhere, or it could be a breeze, as it was for us. It's a tough decision and there are pros and cons to both options. On another note, glad you will consider the Weinhaus Mayer. I often think fondly of our nights spent on the balcony there!

ok, see, that just made me feel MUCH better about being undecided on the car thing! clearly, there are serious positives and serious negatives. i hate hate hate traffic, but i also know how much having a car would have helped us in paris, when all i wanted to do was leave. i will ask on here about germany summer driving experiences. ah how i envy those who can travel in the off season. even though this is my last year teaching (at least for a year, anyway), my husband will always be a teacher. oh well. such is life!