handlebar

Hi everyone! I am going on a trip probably next year (2014) in September with my DH and both my parents. We are in our early 30's and my parents are in their late 50's early 60's but my mother can't do TONS of walking but is ok to stroll cities at a leisurely pace as long as there are breaks. Question is, we have 26 days of which 2 will be flying, 10 will be in London/ Bath, then we will be taking a hopper flight to either Basel, Geneva, or Zurich and spending the remaining 14 days in the Swiss/German area. We were thinking about doing Lucerne, Lauterbrunnen, Colmar, Heidelburg, Rudesheim, and Cochem then flying out of Frankfurt...

Do you think 14 days are enough?
If so, how would you break up the trip? (how many days in each location)
Where would you fly into out of the options mentioned above?
What sites do you suggest seeing?

We are interested in castles ( dont really need to go inside them all though) cute towns, beautiful scenery, a train trip/excursion and good food. My dad really wants to see the black forest too. We plan on driving and we already know about the drop off fees for that. We have already been from fussen, to rothenburg so we don't need to see that area again. I am not sure if I missed anything that might help with answers but I look forward to all the great responses!

handlebar

Anyone?

swandav2000

Hi handlebar,

Just a quick comment --

You've listed six destinations for 14 days; assuming that you need to be in Frankfurt the night before your flight, and that's seven destinations. That means you'll be packing up and moving hotels about every other day. I think that's too much moving, especially for a group (assuming that not everyone moves at the same speed . . . ).

You can calculate that you lose about half a day of "outside" time with every move due to the chores of packing up and checking out of a hotel, then checking in and unpacking. Add in the time it'll take to travel from one to the other, and that's pretty much the whole day wasted.

So, I would make some cuts to your wish list. With 14 days (13 nights?) I would have 3, or 4 at the most, stops.

Have fun as you plan!

s

greg

Do I presume that you included Colmar to visit Haut-Koenigsbourg castle? That one posed difficulties in your case. They don't have a parking lot. You park on the road, so you would drop your parents off at the entrance and the driver might have to park quite far down the road. Then of course, you have to walk up steep path to the castle from the road. I would allocate most days in Lauterbrunnen due to the large number of destinations you can visit from there. Then Lucerne. Colmar might consume days depending on how much of Alsace you care to visit. The drive from Colmar to Obernai is a wine lover's paradise.

I suspect I would get opposing views, but if you want good food, stay in France.

handlebar

Actually, we listed Colmar because we thought it looked like a cute little town... My husband and I are photographers and we thought it was very picturesque. We actually ( don't kill me) don't drink wine... So the vineyards are not a huge draw for us either. Colmar was more of a stop over to break up a longer drive. You are probably wondering why we are going to Germany at all. Most of these spots are small towns. When we have been to Europe before, we found that 2 nights seemed about perfect for the smaller towns. Is that not true of these locations ( for the most part? We do have a total of 14 nights and do not need to be in frankfurt the night before. we were thinking... 2 nts lucerne, 3 or 4 nights in Lauterbrunnen, 2 nts in Colmar, 2 or 3 in Heidelburg, 2 nts in rothenburg and 2 nts in Cochem... Out of these where would you remove time and where would you add it?