RC111

I am travelling from Amsterdam to Munich by train but would like to stop over in the Rhine Valley for one night before continuing to Munich the next day (obviously seeing as much of the Rhine valley as possible). Will the boat be an option ? I have heard that St Goar is cool.

hopscotch

How about taking a ferry down the Rhine on the K-D Line? http://www.k-d.com/. I hope that you know some German. You can start in Köln and go up river to Mainz. Then hop another train to Munich.

GeoffHamer

The most attractive part of the Rhine is probably between Koblenz and Bingen. There are railways on both sides of the river. The main boat operator is Köln-Düsseldorfer (www.k-d.com) but there are many others; the services are seasonal, so it depends on what time of year you're travelling. Note that if you're travelling southwards, boats are going upstream, against the current, so journeys are slow.
St. Goar is an attractive small town so is a good stopping point. Local trains stop there and at other small towns. There is a ferry across to St. Goarshausen on the other side of the river.

treplow

GeoffHamer gives you good summary of some of your options. St. Goar is indeed a good place to stop. To get there, however, you may have to change trains in Koblenz. Check www.bahn.de for schedules from Amsterdam. If you are leaving from the Amsterdam airport, enter Amsterdam Schipholm, otherwise the main stataion Amsterdam Centraal.

If you don't have much luggage, you probably would enjoy a boat trip from either Koblenz or St. Goar to Bingen. Then get back on the train. Again, however, you may want to change in Mainz or Frankfurt to get onto a faster train.

One other option: Stop in Koblenz, take a boat upstream to as far as your time allows, then take a local train back to Koblenz, and then catch another fast train to Munich. The local trains are shown as some type of Regio, the fast trains as IC (Intercity) EC (Eurocity) and ICE (Intercity Express, these are the fast streamlined jobbies).

As for the boat, you can decide when you get to either Koblenz or St. Goar. I would do it only if the weather was halfway decent.

JN

My suggestion would be to train to either Bacharach or Sankt Goar--cool little towns to visit--explore the towns that day, shop/have a nice meal and stay overnight. The next morning you could do a boat ride on THE most scenic part: Bacharach to Sankt Goar then train to Munich. Downstream running boats (e.g., Bacharach to SG) are much faster than the reverse route. So, if time is an issue, consider staying in Bacharach, boating downstream and training to Munich.

Dohlice

We are going in September and our first stop after flying into Frankfurt is St. Goar. We are staying at the Hotel Am Markt and it is right across from the boat dock – it’s gotten good reviews and it’s very reasonable priced. We’re planning to take a cruise one way on the Rhein and bike back. It’s also very close to the castle ruins and we really want to explore there. Bacharach seems great, too but we’d rather stay in St. Goar and go see Bacharach.

Travelnut

We stayed at Hotel am Markt in St Goar a couple years ago. Quiet town, clean-but-plain hotel rooms, good restaurant in the hotel. Just down a hill from the St Goar train station. Views of 3 castles from our window...
I've read that most of the Bacharach hotels suffer from their position relative to the train tracks -had no problem with train noise in St Goar.
http://www.hotel-am-markt-sankt-goar.de/

To explore the Rheinfels castle ruins (just up the hill):
http://www.ricksteves.com/plan/desti.../rheinfels.htm

hopscotch

There are a lot of St. Goar fans on this thread. It's rather a small town for me. I'm a city boy. I would spend some time in Düsseldorf, my favorite German city.

Travelnut

Actually, there isn't much at all to "do" in St Goar, but it is very good for sleeping at night, and the Rheinfels castle was interesting.

Boppard is a great small town, nice riverside promenade, bike rentals, also has a boat dock, and many more hotels than St Goar. I also had looked at hotels in Boppard but our trip coincided with a wine festival there and there weren't any rooms left in my hotels of interest.

jamspo

Looking to travel Amsterdam to Munich in September. Has anyone ridden the overnight train?

Is it worth stopping in one of these beautiful towns? Can I take a boat from sankt goar down the river for a few hours with luggage and continue on train to Munich in one day?

jamspo

and wife wants to know where is the best shopping of these towns...

lavandula

Shopping - to my mind the best shopping on the Rhine is Cologne and Frankfurt, not the pretty little villages of the middle Rhine gorge, which don't have all that much going on. Mainz is also pretty good, and Rüdesheim has all the souvenir shops, including a Käthe Wohlfahrt Christmas decoration shop.

What were you think about buying?

Lavandula

jamspo

OK. Going amsterdam to Munich. We're stopping over in Sankt Goar at Hotel Am Markt.

Is it best to boat to Sankt Goar?

or from Sankt Goar to Munich?

Thanks!