Rhine River Cruises for day trip

Cindy, one option might be to stop in Bacharach and take a day trip via KD Cruises from there to St. Goar. If you go early in the day and return later in the afternoon, you'd have time to explore Rheinfels Castle and the town of St. Goar. There's a large parking lot right next to the KD docks (there are usually lots of large tour Buses parked there). You may be fortunate to travel on the Goethe, which is an elegant old paddlewheeler. While the ride isn't any different than on the newer boats, it's interesting to watch the paddlewheel in action through the plexiglass viewing ports. The ride passes by some VERY scenic areas and lots of vineyards. Happy travels!

Just a hint, unless you REALLY like boats, do Bacharach to St. Goar (40 min, against the current) by boat and St. Goar to Bacharach by train (10 min). The trip against the current by boat from St. Goar to Bacharach takes 70 min and covers the same stretch of river as the shorter trip. That's an advantage of traveling by train. You never have to backtrack to get your car. [Edit: if you start in St. Goar and take the train to Bacharach first, the train ticket is good for a discount (20%) on you ticket at the K-D kiosk.]

Cindy, go to http://www.k-d.com/englisch/index.html and click on the Timetable; you esp. want to look at pgs 7-8. Be sure and pay attention to the Peak Season vs Off Season timetables.....I'm one of those rare people that likes long cruises; most people on the Helpline are mainly interested in the Bacharach > St Goar stretch, and in that (faster) direction, too.....[[EDIT - SEE?!? I told ya...LOL!]] And remember, if the timetables don't match up with your own schedule, you can do what many do and take the train back to your car. There are many more trains than boats. MAKE SURE that wherever you get off is on the correct side of the river...the same one where your car is...!!! And I second the Goethe, if possible, but they're all good.

LEE, excellent suggestion (as always!). I did the trip by boat in both directions, as I wanted to travel at different times when the lighting would be different (for photos). The return trip was late in the afternoon, and the light was fantastic! I was quite enjoying the "nautical experience" so didn't mind the extra time on the return journey. I was also still "suffering" from a massive "mess" which had occurred with the trains in that area the previous day when I returned from Remagen and Koblenz, so a different travel method was welcome at the time. Cheers!

Going from Bacharach to St. Goar, you get to see the Pfalzgrafenstein (mid river toll castle) close up, the towns of Kaub and Oberwesel from the water, and the Loreley, which, after all, is just a big cliff with a flag on top. That's about it, and it doesn't take 40 min to see them. The rest of the time you get to look at water.

I wish I would've posted this question before booking our cruise. We were on our way back towards Mainz from St. Goar and about an hour into it, I had to bored kids! Needless to say, we hopped off the boat and took the train back. The area between Bingen and St Goar offered some spectacular views the "first time". I would recommend purchasing the tickets online at http://kdrhine.com/ We purchased our adult tickets online and it said to pay a discount price at the docks for the 2 kids. I'm not sure what they call discount because it cost just as much as ours online!

If you've got two hours to cruise, they'd be well spent by starting in Bacharach but continuing past St. Goar to Braubach for a tour of the best castle on the Rhine, Marksburg: www.marksburg.de You can then catch a train south to St. Goarshausen and ferry over to St. Goar if you'd like to visit St. Goar too. Bacharach, where you car is, is only ten minutes south of St. Goar by train.

Some people like to schedule a 'vacation within a vacation'; once, my husband and I started the cruise in Koblenz and got off 3 1/2 hours later at St Goar! We had a great breakfast, then kicked back, got comfy, (had a few beers), watched the gorgeous scenery just float by, then ate a fantastic lunch at Hotel Hauser at St Goar (directly across from the boat dock). Then, we took the train back to Köln, ate dinner at Fruh am Dom (oh, my - they had Kölsch on tap, gosh darn it), then went back to our hotel. The next day, we picked up the pace and got back to our regular traveling. It sure was a lot easier than trying to get to the Cinque Terre!

Thanks for all the good tips. We are driving from Kaiserslautern and want to do this river cruise trip as a test run for September when my in-laws arrive for a visit. They are in their 80's and so I'm making sure everything is pretty close to things of interest. This time around I'll have my two daughters, ages 19 and 21 and this will be their first time on the river. And we only have one day as on Friday the oldest flies back to the states. We've never taken a train either! :-)

Christi, KDRhein.com is a website of Travel Toe, a travel agency. They are a ticket reseller. The official website of K-D is www.k-d.de. Select the British Flag, then "River Cruises", "Scheduled Cruises", and "Fares". On that page, they say, "Children's fares: Children under 4 travel free. Children over 4 and under 14 pay only € 5.00 on all round-trip and scheduled cruises."

Boat one way as long as it is interesting; stop at a village for a late lunch; and train back.

Cindy, For the train back, a Lander or Schoenes Wochende pass covers up to five people for around 35 Euros. It's a day pass so you can hop on and off as much as you like at towns along the way. The trains run hourly during the day/early evening in Sept/Oct, they may run more or less often other times. I'm not sure what point to point costs per ticket on that short of ride.

Thanks for that info on the train pass...is it easy to purchase these types of tickets directly at the stations?

A Rheinland-Pfalz-Ticket, the Länder-Ticket for that state, will cover travel on the trains along the Rhein, from Mainz/Wiesbaden, past Koblenz, almost to Bonn for €28 for up to 5 people. As long as you stay within a single state, a Länder-Ticket will be less than a €37 Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket. However, the adult fare for the train between Bacharach and St. Goar is only €3,20 pP one way. As long as Bacharach is not included in the trip (i.e. between say Oberwesel and Koblenz), you can use a VRM Minigruppentageskarte for €20 for up to 5 people. And yes, these tickets, the S-W-T or the RL-P tickets are readily available from automats at the stations. They cost €2 more at the counter (there are no counters in St. Goar and Bacharach) for personal service. The Minigruppentageskarte is only available from automats within the VRM, which extends up the Rhein to Oberwesel.

I wanted to let everyone know how our trip went. We were delayed in getting to Bingen, but finally made it to the parking lot near the Hildegard vom Bingen museum. We parked there for free. We then walked down to the river and easily found the dock for the K-D cruise ship. We took the Goethe Riverboat and we were able to get seats right up front. We cruised to Boppard where we departed and had dinner right there at a hotel which had tables set up next to the river. We then made our way (about two blocks away) to the Bahnhof (train station) and easily bought our tickets to return to Bingen. We thought our stop was Bingen Hauptbahnhof, but Bingen Stattmitte would have been better. It was 10:30 pm when we were walking from the train station trying to find our car - thank goodness we had our Navi as it was not close by. Next time we will park closer to the Bingen Stattmitte train station which is further down on the right from the museum. Then our car will be close by when we return. Overall we had a great time and all of your ideas/tips were very helpful. Thank you all so much!

Yea! It's so nice to be able to do a trial run...MUCH less pressure on the 'tour guide' (and less needless walking around for your in-laws)!