Travel Suggestions for 2-week stay in Stuttgart

kStuttgart is part of Swabia and the Germans in that part of the counrty are Swabians. They have their own dialect and cuisine. Ulm has the world's tallest cathedral spire. Tubingen is easy to stay a few days in. Heildelburg too. And if you really want to explore the backwoods to to Bad Urach for a day and drive through Grabenstettin, the home of my ancestors. There's a nice bar/cafe there.

"Is it better to get a global eurail pass and travel everywhere via train, or should we rent a car for the 2 weeks we are planning on being there? " A global pass is valid in 23 countries in Europe. You're not going to travel to 23 countries in 14 days. Look at using point-point tickets, particularly advance purchase Savings Fare tickets available online from the German Rail (Bahn) website. From Stuttgart you can travel down to Bodensee (Konstanz, Mainau, Friederichshafen, and Lindau) by train using a €29 Baden-Württemberg ticket. Once you get to Ulm, all of Bavaria is before you and you can go anywhere with a €29 Bayern-Ticket. Actually, in the next months you need to learn something of European geography and particularly German geography. You don't need to go all the way to Paris, Vienna, and Luzern. There is too much to see locally. I've had several vacations where I never got out of Bavaria. You have the whole Black Forest just to the south. There is the Hohenzollern castle in Hechingen. As for Munich, make that city an overnight trip - probably over many nights. You could easily spend 3 or 4 days seeing Munich and from there make trips to Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, and Neuschwanstein. And stop for a night in Rothenburg odT on your way to Munich.

Granted, maybe my original post didn't make this obvious, but I am pretty good with geography. :) But in my preliminary research, I did go to the website for the eurail passes, and because I do want to possibly visit Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland I thought it might be necessary to get the global one. But thanks for the advice on the trains - that will definitely save a bunch of $$. I chose Paris because my daughter's dream is to go to Paris. So that will definitely be one of our overnight trips seeing how I'm not sure when we will be able to make it back to Europe. And Lucerne (or Luzern) is a personal favorite of mine from when I was a child and my dad was stationed in Germany and I want to experience it with my family. Because it's probably going to be our only trip over there for a long time, I want to make the trip as European as possible, and not just limit it to Germany. Thanks for the input!

Carrie, Because your time over there is short, two weeks as opposed to 4-6 weeks, and you're willing to take trips by train, I would suggest getting not a Global Pass but rather a France-Germany Pass. Yes, from Stuttgart you can easily get to Paris, Vienna, Munich, Strasbourg or Metz, Frankfurt, or Berlin, etc. if you take the train with a departure prior to 09:00. The TGV Stuttgart-Paris takes 3+hrs. On the TGV or ICE crossing between France and Germany, reservations are manditory, usually 10 Euro, 2nd class. Depending on the level of your interest in German history or WW II, there are sites not far from Stuttgart that may be of interest to you, reachable by train too.

On the Bahn website (link above) you will find Savings fares from Stuttgart to Luzern, Vienna, and Paris starting (with enough pre-purchase time, max 92 days) at €39/p each way. There are direct TGVs from Stuttgart to Paris. Vienna is probably an IC to Munich or Nuernberg and Railjet from there. For Luzern, you'll take an express train to Zuerich and a Swiss express train (probably IC) from there. German Rail has an agreement with Swiss Rail that permits you to include a leg (Zuerich to Luzern) entirely outside Germany in conjunction with the Saving fare. Not so with other countries.

The daily BW or Bavaria tickets are great money saves. That 29 euro is for ALL FOUR of you, not apiece. Hard to beat that. Two weeks isn't all that long to be going to a bunch of cities in different countries. Plan out your days, recognizing that on long train travel days you will do little besides ride on the train. You may want to fly into either Frankfurt or Munich and then take the train to Stuttgart. You will have to figure out the cost/time benefits. I recently flew into Frankfurt (that's where American Airlines flies and I used their frequent flier miles for the trip) and then took the ICE o Stuttgart. Tübingen and nearby Hohenzollern Castle are interesting. I really liked a train trip I took to Sigmaringen and its castle.

Carrie: I agree with previous poster about so much to see. Last spring we flew into Frankfurt, rented a car, hit Wurzburg, Rothenburg od T (a must-see, in my opinion), Heidelberg, Burg Eltz, and the "Romantic Rhine," in 3 days. We eventually ended up in Paris for five days (where we dropped the rental car and used public transport). I will comment that if your daughter's dream is to go to Paris, I would not spend less than 3 nights there! Too much to see. Whatever you do, don't try to cram in too much; pace yourself, and allow time to enjoy what you're seeing, and allow time for what I call "happy accidents." You will NOT see it all, and therefore you should leave with an excuse to go back someday.

As for where to fly, of course, Stuttgart would be the most convenient. We flew into Stuttgart in 2002. At the time it was a direct flight from Atlanta, the only direct flight to Stuttgart from the US. I think now it is a connecting flight through Amsterdam(?). If you fly into Frankfurt, you can get full fare tickets for 3 adults on a second tier express train (IC or EC) from the airport to Stuttgart for €129 each way. That's for the whole family, 3 adults (the 15 yo is considered an adult, and the 12 yo goes for free with parents if listed on the ticket). So you have to add €258 (in dollars) to the difference in airfare. I wouldn't try to use a Saver Fare after a trans-Atlantic flight due to the uncertainty of arrival time.

Since you only have 2 weeks, fly into one city and home from a different city ("a multi-city" or "open jaws" ticket) to save a little time. For example, fly into Frankfurt or Stuttgart and fly home from Paris. Or fly home from Vienna. Another possibility would be to fly into Munich and spend a couple days there before heading to Stuttgart while finishing your trip in Paris. Think about how much time you want to spend on the train / in the car given the short time.

For ideas on what to see and do around the Stuttgart area, I highly recommend going over to Trip Advisor. There is a Destination Expert there, named Marco, that is as passionate about the Stuttgart area, as I am about Frankfurt. :-)) He has dozens and dozens of posts about things of interest for the whole surrounding area. There you will find lots of infor about all the little towns, as well as Stuttgart itself.

For the car rental vs. public transportation question, there is a consideration in your decision that perhaps only you and your aunt can answer. How easy is it to reach the Stuttgart Hauptbahnhof (main train station station) from her house? Does she live near the city center, in which case, it's probably easy by bus or tram. Does she live in one of the outer districts, in which case you made to to make one or two transfers before you reach the Hbf. Or, does she live in a small town or village well outside of Stuttgart, in which case the commute just to reach the Hbf may last over an hour? Some family members who stayed with me grew frustrated on how long it took them to commute to the Mannheim Hbf and decided to rent a car halfway through their visit.