Germany

Kris I would change my schedule so as to NOT compete with oktoberfest. Everything is skewed, price-wise, during that period.

In 2007 I stayed at the Stadthotel in Landsberg (a town on the Romantic Road) on the last Saturday night of Oktoberfest. Not only did they have rooms available, their prices were the same as the rest of the year. I found Stadthotel, BTW, using the town website, www.landsberg.de. It had the URL of the hotel's website plus the email address. I emailed them directly for reservations. Stadthotel is not listed on any booking website I've checked and is much less expensive than what the booking websites offered. If you want an apartment, from the Landsberg homepage, click on "Tourismus", then "Hotels + Gastgeber", then "Unterkünfte Landsberg", then selekt "Ferienwohnungen from the pull down menu under "Unterkunftverzeichnis". Landsberg is in the southern part of the Romantic Road. Nearer the middle is the town of Nördlingen. Nördlingen is at the northern end of a rail line from Augsburg, about 2½ hrs from Rothenburg by rail via Donauwörth and Treuchtlingen. Dinkelsbühl is about 40 min away by bus. When in Nördlingen, I stayed at Gasthof zum Engel and would recommend it. Again, they are not on any booking website, but their email address, [email protected], is on their website under "Impressum". Zum Engel also has Ferienwohnungen.

from rothenburg to fussen is about 3 to 4 hrs drive. you may be able to go faster, but i found the romantic road is not all that clearly marked and it's a relatively small road, so likely you'll get off and on and therefore taking additional time. When i drove it 2 yrs ago I had to pull over multiple times to figure out why I'm on the autobahn all of sudden and where I was going. if you want to get to rothenburg you might just spend overnight there.

I was in Bavaria in late September 2010. We stayed in a small town southeast of Munich. That location would not be the best for what you want to do, but I just wanted to say that Oktoberfest will probably not affect prices (or anything else really) outside of Munich and maybe it's suburbs. I would recommend you stay in two places - one further south to provide access to Fussen/Garmisch, and then stay in Rothenburg at least one, if not two nights. It is possible to rent apartments for less than a week. We even rented one for 2 nights in Verona! Rothenburg has a lot of nice B&B's. Have fun! I love Bavaria!!

Mittenwald is a really neat town and makes a pretty good base for the southern part of Bavaria. From there, we did day trips to Neuschwanstein, the Zugspitze, Garmish and down into Austria. We stayed in a B&B that has some apartments -- Gastehaus Edlhuber. It was the best of all worlds -- lots of space, a great breakfast and a friendly owner who provided excellent restaurant recommendations.

Remember - last week of September is the start of Octoberfest in Munich, the price of hotel double at that time. Its a fantastic experience that attracts folks world wide.
Consider little towns like Bamberg or Rothenburg ob der Tauber which is near the Romantic highway.

I would rent a car and drive. If you can drive in the US, you can drive in Germany. Hohenschwangau (home to Neuschwanstein Castle), Oberammergau, Rothenburg der Ober Tauber (north of Munich), are must NOT miss sights. Why spend two or more hours each way from Munich to see each of these beautiful villages when you can drive to each and probably save money on lodging. Unlike Spain or Italy, the highways in Germany are free. Keep to the right, be mindful when changing lanes that someone could be driving VERY fast (we found it was usually an AUDI) in the left hand lane. The Romantic Road wasn't too Romantic to us. You had to drive it for some locations so we found if we didn't, we did the autobahn. I think you can a room a guesthouse would be quite reasonable in these small towns.