My DH and I are 1st time travelers to this region and would appreciate some Fodorite help in logistics of traveling from Italy to Alsace, France then on to Germany. We will be arriving on Saturday, October 1 in Milan by rental car (picked up originally in Florence, Italy for a week in the Tuscany Region) .We plan to tour the Lake Como area on Sunday and part of the day on Monday. We would like to drop the rental car off in either Lake Como or Milan and train to either Zurich, Lucerne, or Basel. If possible, we would like to see some of this Swiss area maybe Tuesday/ Wednesday (October 4-5) but don't want to rent a car. Is this easily doable via bus/train? The majority of our remaining 11 days will be spent in Germany with a 3-4 day stay in Alsace. We were considering training from wherever we stay in Switzerland to Karlsruhe, Germany (to do some exploring in the area of my ancestry); renting a car there and then looping over to Alsace for and then back to Germany towards the Romantic Road area towns. Is this logistically sound? We would also like to drive over to Salzburg, Austria for a day or two and then to Munich for our return flight to the US on October 15. We haven't locked in any firm itinerary nor booked hotels for this portion of our trip yet. We were hoping to "wing it" and just find cute charming (not expensive) accommodations wherever we decide to stop along the way. We are both in our early 60's and still pretty fit and healthy. Thanks for any helpful suggestions.

Sounds like a wonderful trip.

To answer your specific questions, I'd say that the best choice for the beginning part of the 11-day portion of your trip would be a train from Milan to Lucerne. Lucerne is a particularly pleasant city, and you can take several different exceptionally nice day-trips by train from Lucerne to nearby mountain/lake locations. A train to Karlsruhe and rental car to Munich via Alsace sounds perfect.

It's late enough in the year that finding a hotel on weekdays should be no problem. If it were me, I'd definitely book ahead for weekend nights, though.

Don

Hi IR,

>We were hoping to "wing it" and just find cute charming (not expensive) accommodations wherever we decide to stop along the way.<

You can wing it and be completely free to stop whenever and wherever for how long you wish, or you can plan ahead and have cute charming (not expensive) accommodations waiting for you.

Have you looked at your route at www.michelin.com or www.maps.google.com?

>we would like to see some of this Swiss area .... Is this easily doable via bus/train?
Of course.

>Is this logistically sound?
Yes

>We would also like to drive over to Salzburg, Austria for a day or two and then to Munich for our return flight to the US on October 15.

I think that Salzburg might be too much of a good thing.

Enjoy your visit.

Thank you Don and Ira for your quick responses. Don, we were leaning on Lucerne so your endorsement helps. Good advice that we'll probably take to reserve rooms for the weekend nights after we start our car journey portion. Ira, we know our overall itinerary is very ambitious.....but we like to "cream skim" our first adventure in new areas and then come back and dedicate more time/focus to some of the specific places we fall in love with. We've done this several times in our US travels and it has worked well for us. I actually did do a Mapquest and a Viamichelin route with some of the specific towns, cities, villages, etc. but leaving Lucerne and encompassing my Alsace and German routes and then over to Salzburg, ending up in Munich for our return trip. We may have to sleep in our car and wash up with wetnaps(lol)! The total pure driving time was something like 26.4 hours

Your trip from Milan to Munich sounds great - but not for 4 days - esp with pubic transit. It;s more doable by car (although renting in one country and dropping in another will be costly. My concern is that in 5 days it sounds like you are trying to visit 9 different places in 14 days. This will involve an awful lot of moving from one hotel to another and one town to another - and really cut into the time you will have to visit places.

Some things - like the romantic Road do lend themselves to driving and visiting more than 1 town a day - but that doesn;t include Strasbourg, Salzburg and Munich - which are major tourist sites and deserve at least a couple of days each. I have been to all the places you are talking about - but over several different trips - and I think you are trying to move way to fast to too many places to really absorb much of anything.

Have you plotted out your days one by one - with where you will stay each night - what town (s) you will see, what the driving times are and how long it takes to see major sights.

Hi IR,

>The total pure driving time was something like 26.4 hours<

You will be in your car, hustling from one stop to the next, for 4 of your 14 days.

Chacun à son goût

Enjoy your expedition.

Last minute tickets on Swiss trains are expensive. Luzern to Winterthur cost 30CHF, and that is not much more than a commuting distance. On the other hand, we found a deal for tickets purchased ahead of time, non-transferable and non-refundable, to go from Milan to Zurich for 25CHF. So if you are considering taking the train in or through Switzerland, see if an early purchase might lower the cost.

Ira....thanks for putting that 26.4 hours into "focus"......I have dropped a couple of stops, remapped it, and have it down to a PURE driving time of 19.7 hours; I think that sounds very doable in 14 days. And, quite a few of these hours are on the Romantic Road. Michael....thanks for the tip on the train tickets; I'll check them out today.