Hi ,
We're in the early stages of planning a 15 day European trip. starting and ending in Frankfurt We would like to get to Munich, Salzburg, Lucerne, & Rome. Is 15 days sufficient? Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks very much,
Mike

Start in Frankfurt but end in Rome to save a day.
It may not be more $$$

To elaborate on bob's reply, that's a lot of places in 2 weeks. If you get open jaw plane tickets, into Frankfurt, out of Rome, (multi-city on airline websites), then you'll save money and precious time by not having to backtrack. Open-jaws tickets should cost about the same as round trip.

Are you coming from North America? If so, you'll probably fly overnight -- losing one night there. And you'll probably be jet-lagged and sleepy the first couple of days. So allow a little extra time at your first stop.

You can take the train directly from Frankfurt airport to Munich. Might as well spend that first jet-lagged day getting to some place you want to be.

Or get a connecting flight - they leave pretty much hourly.

LOL, Frankfurt to Rome and return can be driven in about 3 days return. The only issue is if you want to stop for any worthwhile periods of time anywhere along the way. But yeah, it can be done if you want to.

For my money, spending less than 4 nights in any place is not best use of time. So with 15 days if that includes your arrival and departure days which are already basically a write off, that leaves you with 13 nights which I would consider a minimum amount of time to spend visiting 3 places.

The two commonest mistakes travellers make are packing too much and trying to see/do too much in too little time.

Thanks very much for all the help. We're probably going to take Salzburg out as it's not too far from Munich and we can day trip to the Linder Hoff , etc.

Also, we have to back track to Frankfurt to pick up My Mother to fly back to the US with us (she'll spend the 2 weeks with my uncle (her brother) while we're vacationing. I know, I'm a good son..LOL

I'm with the connecting flight group. Take a flight to the place you want to go rather than coupling a long train ride with the long flight to get to Frankfurt.

How do you plan to travel on the ground? I would consider flying into Munich, daytripping from Munich to Salzburg and then flying to Rome. I know I left out Lucerne but there is always next time to ride the cog train or cable car up Mt Pilatus.

I missed the later post about coming back to Frankfurt to pick up Mom. Reverse the order. See if you can get a Lufthansa flight to Rome that connects in Frankfurt (Lufthansa's hub), drop off Mom, go on to Rome, fly back to Munich then back through Frankfurt.