I wanted to share some highlights of our 16-day trip.
Berlin - two full days there. One was spent visiting various museums (Pergamon, Bode, Neues, Tacheles), and the other was spent on a city bus tour. For 20 Euros you could 'hop on, hop off' at any sites you wanted, with another bus coming about every 15-20 minutes. While much of downtown of Berlin is walkable, is was nice to sit on a bus (especially since we had rain) and do a tour. We stayed at the Circus Hotel; small but nice modern rooms. The hotel prides itself on being 'green' and 'bio'; everything we ate was organic.
We then rented a car from Berlin to do the rest of our trip. One point: renting the car from a location downtown versus at Tegel Airport saved us $250.
Cologne - visited the Dom (Cathedral). Impressive.
Burg Eltz (on the Mosel)- wonderful castle but I can't decide if I like Marksburg better. Both had great tours. Although the RS guidebook says Burg Eltz takes credit cards, we found out that the minimum purchase was $50. The tour was $8 per person; we would have had to come with a larger group. Just something to consider....
Beilstein (on the Mosel) - a great RS recommendation. We stayed at the Hotel Haus Lipmann; the family owns at least 3 hotels/inns in town. It was charming and quaint. I highly recommend it! I think there are only 10 rooms in the entire hotel; we really felt special there. The town really has a 'Cinderella' character to it. From there, we toured Burg Eltz and made a day trip to Trier. Also, Cochem was fun to visit.