GERMANY
 

We will be flying into Munich and thinking about driving to Frankfurt taking in Garmish and Fuessen and Rothenburg, please can someone advise on good decent hotels and if I should hire a local guide there ?

Thank you

Are you asking about hiring a car and driver/guide? Or hiring a car for yourselves and finding a guide in each town (IMHO in these places a guide is absolutely not necessary).

How long is your trip? What time of year? How many of you are there? What are you looking for in a hotel (price range, style, amenities??)

We have approximately 10 days in Germany and we are looking are good decent hotels not 4 stars, centrally located of course, Jul or Aug 2005, possibly renting a car to do all these alternatively taking the train is the second option. Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

ipechan- For a 10 day trip I would recommend 2-3 days in Munich. Then rent a car and drive to the Garmish -Fuessen area. Spend around 4 days visiting all the sites in the area- waiting for a clear day for a trip up the Zugspitze or just hiking. Then drive up the Romantic Road stopping overnight in Rothenburg (Night Watchman's Tour). Then drive to Wurzburg, drop off the car and spend the night. Then catch a train to Frankfurt. No need for a guide, just check out the sites you might want to visit on the web or a good guide book. Lots of hotel suggestions already exist on this site. Have a wonderful trip!

I start with Octopustravel.com when I look for hotels in cities. In Munich we try to stay close to the central area which usually means near the Haupt Bahnhof. In the countryside you may want to look at Rick Steves recommendations. We took a suggestion from one of his books and stayed in a little farm-house B&B called Gasthaus Schluxen (don't know if I am spelling that right) in Unter Pinswang (right on the Austrian side of the border about 4 miles from Fussen) We loved it.

OK folks, thanks for the input until now. This is what I have so far for out trip on next year in Jul or Aug.

Day 1 Munich
Day 2 Munich
Day 03 Munich/Fuessen
Day 04 Fuessen
Day 05 Rothenburg ob Tauber
Day 06 Rothenburg/Frankfurt
Day 07 Frankfurt
Day 08 Frankfurt/Nurburg
Day 09 Nurburg
Day 10 Nurburg/Frankfurt/USA

Questions:

1 Is it better to fly into Munich or
is Frankfurt a better choice
2 I promised my childred-2 boys 20 and
18 years that we will apsend a few
days at the Nurburgring Nordschleife
race track for formula 1 racing events
and have them attend 2 sessions of racing instructions there. So any inout taking in all these into consideration wouldbe appreciated.
3 Is Frankfurt closer to Nurburgring
Nordschleife or is Munich closer to
the rign ?

Thank you once again for all the invaluable advise and assistance

Joe Chan

Joe,
the Nürburgring is closer to Frankfurt (Frankfurt-Nürburgring ca. 160 km, München-Nürburgring ca. 500 km).

For English information on the Nürburgring see

http://213.239.207.198/nuerburgring....id=186&L=1

Joe, do you have a particular reason to go to Frankfurt on Day 7? There's nothing particularly wrong with Frankfurt, but there are more interesting places to stay.

If you want to stay in the village of Hohenschwangau (where the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles are located), I can recommend the Pension Neuschwanstein: http://www.albrecht-neuschwanstein.de/index2.html

The pension includes breakfast, free parking, and is within walking distance of the castle ticket center.

A nice restaurant within a few minutes drive of the pension is at:
http://www.alpenhotel-allgaeu.de/engl/e-index.htm

Rufus:

The stay in Frankfurt is a (break) from the driving to go to Nurburgring Nordschleife ! If someone can give me the driving time from Rothenburg to Nurburingring Nordschleife then perhaps I will not stopover in Frankfurt and drive direct to the ring. Yeah, gonna do some hard driving at the ring. It has been my dream since I was a kid !

Cheers

Joe- 1. Fly into Munich and out of FRA. 2. Check out "viamichelin.com" - Only 3 hrs. 17 min. from Rothenburg to Nurburg. Autobahn most of the way. For a more scenic (albeit much slower) would be from Koblenz then along the Mosel to Cochem where you might want to spend the night and visit Burg Eltz -Wunderbar! Your kids will have a ball!

For Munich hotel, look into the Hotel Uhland. It's a great location, walking distance to train station, longer walk to Marianplatz, safe and beautiful tree-lined neighborhood, nice breakfast buffet, newly renovated rooms in old mansion, reasonable rates, friendly staff. We stayed there in June with our two teens in a nice, large room.

Good advice from CharlieB. Lots of nice towns along the Mosel.

Rufus,
So happy to to see you are on the boards right now! We were able to get the same car rental price to return the car to Bamberg as to Wurzburg so we are spending our last night (Valentine's Day) in Bamberg at Hotel Brudermuhle (I hope, I have emailed them for a reservation). Your accounts made it too irresistible to turn down.

I've been looking all evening and I cannot find a website with the open hours and major sights. Do you know of one?
Many Thanks,
Jill

Just a heads up--
when we went to pick up our rental car in Munich, at the train depot AutoEurope, they refused to give us our car because we didn't have our ORIGINAL passports in hand, for all four family members (including our two kids!!).
We had color Xeroxes of all four passports on us and showed them, but the originals I'd locked in the hotel room.
Couldn't believe it, but they wouldn't give us the car-- even though I had already paid in full in advance!
The other two rental companies, Avis and another, said they didn't have the original passport requirement, but also had very expensive cars on such short notice. It was an unpleasant surprise, so be fore-warned.
When we returned to the states, I called and complained about the situation and at least got my money back.
The good news is that we decided to take trains for our day-trips to Salzburg and Fussen and were really glad we didn't have a car anyway. The Bayern Pass was so cheap and the trains so pleasant, especially one day when it poured rain for awhile.

I would agree about NOT renting a car for use WITHIN Munich...entirely not necessary, parking can be a major headache, etc. Better to rely on taxis or the excellent public transport system (NO, there really isn't anything comparable anywhere in the US to the public transport systems in Europe so start thinking
"really works and really convenient").

I've done the Neuschwanstein and others by rail from Munich. I would caution you that you CAN do the castles by rail AND using public transport (usually local busses) once you arrive in the castle area (and you can do them from either Oberammergau or Fuessen)...BUT for flexibility I would look into using a car gor this segment especially if you aren't going back to Munich.

In terms of flying into FRA vs. MUC...you might look at the difference in costs of an into/out of FRA vs. an "open jaw" of into MUC and out of FRA (the into MUC may very well entail a change of plane in FRA).

If you go in and out of FRA you can easily catch a train from the airport station to Munich although flying on might be more cost effective for you.

Jill--If the Brudermuhle isn't available, the Sankt Nepomuk looked nice, too.

As I remember, in most of the smaller German cities, sights had shorter hours in the off season with many museums/sights closing at 4 or 5 p.m. Many castles are closed in the winter entirely. Bamberg is probably the same.

Do you know how many Aggies it takes to eat an armadillo?

LOL, Aggie jokes find me even here!

No, this Aggie confesses to not knowing precisely how many Aggies it takes to eat (eww!) and armadillo...

Jill '02

P.S. I contacted the Bamberg Tourist Office for information about winter hours and open sights and will post if I hear back.

It takes two: One to eat it, and the other to watch for cars.

Hook 'em, Horns! V

Congrats - that was actually a new one to me! Doesn't happen too often as my husband is a Longhorn and hasn't the ability to resist Aggie jokes throughout the entire month of November every year ;-)