staying in Germany

Lisa, we need to know what your group would like to do while in Germany. Do you like to visit museums (interests?) and cathedrals? Do you want to do some skiing? Do you want to stay in the general area of Frankfurt? There are so many possibilities so we need for you to narrow it down for us.

We do not have to stay in Frankfurt - we are just flying in and out of there. After reading Rick Steve's book on Germany 2011 and talking to a friend who always rents an apartment for her family when traveling abroad - thinking an apartment would be a good fit for us. The train schedule hasn't been posted for Dec 25 yet so I don't know if it runs on Christmas and New Years Day when we come and go. Everyone agrees museums, cathedrals and/or castles would be great. Skiing if not to pricey would also work - thanks for your help!

The trains run every day, but on holidays, such as the 25th, 26th and the 1st, they will run on a Sunday schedule, so not so many. The 25th and 26th are official holidays, so no stores will be open and the museums all sort of take their turns closing or opening on these 2 days. Some will be open on both days. Same with restaurants, some close down for the whole holiday period, so it is nice to be in a large enough city where you can have a wide choice. Other attractions in Frankfurt, such as the Palmengarten or the Zoo, will be open every day. On the 31st, stores will close down around 1600 or so, and it would be recommended to have reservations somewhere for dinner. At midnight, all of Germany will explode with way too many fireworks. They are legal to buy the 3 days before, and statistics show the average German will spend about 150 euro on fireworks. These are good ones too, not just little cherry bombs and sparklers. Any large city will have a firework party going on for at least 45 min. Berlin has the biggest one of course. Frankfurt can be a great base as it is so easy to get to other small towns, like a train trip down the Rhine, Heidelberg, Büdingen (a medieval walled town), Würzburg, Idstein, Seligenstadt, Mainz, Wiesbaden or Bad Homburg. It has plenty of museums (over 20) to keep you busy. On days when the weather is nasty, you will be able to take real advantage of this, though they are worth seeing any other time too. Will be happy to give you more suggestions if you like.

The closest major ski areas with reliable snow cover to Frankfurt are several hours to the south and northeast. In the south, the closest options are the southern Schwartzwald and the Allgäuer Alps. Feldberg has the best skiing in the Schwartzwald, and the pistes around Oberstdorf would be your best option of the Allgäu. I'm less familiar with the ski resorts to the northeast. I think many of them are located in the Thüringerwald. I would expect prices to be significantly cheaper than the Alps and Schwartzwald. There are some ski pistes much closer to Frankfurt, but the weather in this area (I live about 40 minutes south of Frankfurt) isn't consistently cold enough in the winter to allow for much skiing.

With such a short period of time and all the holidays turning things a bit upside down I would recommend following Jo's advice. The towns she mentions are all worthy of a visit; my wife and I visited many of them in 10 days earlier this year. We stayed in Idstein and near Bad Homberg. We wouldn't have gone to Idstein if Jo hadn't suggested it and we absolutely loved it, from the Witches Tower to the main square to the church to the ancient building housing our hotel. Büdingen, another town suggested by Jo, has fabulous city walls and all sorts. These places give the atmosphere of Rothenburg ob der Tauber without all the kitsch and tat because they are real towns still alive and occupied by people doing other than all catering for tourists. Würzburg is really easy to get to by train from the Frankfurt area and has a really cool palace full of baroqueness. All that area is well worth seeing. If you need specifics, Jo is the person to ask. What she doesn't know about the Frankfurt doesn't want knowing. Have a great trip, you are going to a really good area.

"...museums, cathedrals and/or castles would be great." Mainz, Worms and Speyer have terrific Romanesque cathedrals. And lucky for you, Speyer will operate its Christmas Market after Christmas as well. It runs through Jan 8 (but not on 12/25 or 26) from 11 to 9 (on 1/1/12 fro 1 to 9.) Worms and Speyer lie to the south of Mainz along the Rhine, with Heidelberg in between and just to the east. As for castles, Marksburg is great and is open for tours daily from 11 to 4 (closed 12/26.) It lies north of Mainz and just south of Koblenz in the scenic Middle Rhine Valley. Rheinfels Castle ruins in St.Goar, in the same area, is open on weekends 11-5 in winter. Heidelberg's castle is open daily until 5:30. http://www.marksburg.de http://www.st-goar.de/17-1-.html I would look seriously at Mainz as a base. It's walkable and has a nice old town near the Cathedral. Its location is just right for seeing the places mentioned above. A "Rheinland-Pfalz" ticket (daypass) will get all of you from Mainz to all the above destinations cheaply - 30 Euros per day for nearly unlimited use of trains and buses. (To get to Heidelberg, you'd use this R-P ticket to get to Mannheim, then get a separate ticket for rest of the trip.) Mainz has a couple of museums, and Frankfurt is easy to reach on a daytrip by train as well; you'd need an RMV group day ticket for an outing to Frankfurt (25 Euros.) www.vrminfo.de/en/tickets-and-fares/ticket-offers/rheinland-pfalz-ticket/?style=big http://www.rmv.de/en/Fahrkarten/Die_richtige_Fahrkarte/Fahrkarten_im_Ueberblick/Tageskarten/42090/Gruppentageskarte_.html