Sorry,
Please disregard my earlier post with Rhine mispelled in the title.

My husband and I will be arriving to the Cologne airport. Can we take the train to St. Goar where we will stay for 3 nights?

We plan to train over to Bacharach one day to site see. We also want to see the castle ruins in St Goar.

We would like to take a short boat trip down the Rhine. It would be fun to visit a winery in the area but I am not sure how to fit it into our itinerary.

Any suggestions? Thanks! Laurie

Stay at least one night at Castle Hotel Schoenburg:

http://hotel-schoenburg.com/ Gorgeous views of the river, the valley and the vineyards.....Ahhhhh!!

Try the following site that lists all the castles that lined the Rhine:
http://www.mediaspec.com/castles/rhein/rheinmap.html

If you're asking whether you can hop off the Rhine cruise and visit a vineyard, I doubt it. But you could hop on a train and stop in almost any of the river towns and find a place willing to offer you tastings and a tour of their facilities. A few years back the tours were free, but now you usually pay a couple Euro to taste.

As for a Rhine Cruise, the following will answer your questions about day long cruises on the Rhine:

http://www.k-d.com/englisch/index.html

P.S. This might help you find a winery:

http://www.chiff.com/wine/europe/mittelrhein.htm

I'd recommend crossing the Rhine on the St. Goar ferry to St. Goarshausen, where you can taste a little wine in the old city tower (Stadtturm) at the south end of town. Also, from there you can take the train up to Braubach for a tour of Marksburg Castle. You can also take a river cruise from St. Goar or St. Goarshausen to Braubach.

Here you'll find a complete list of wineries that you can visit along the Rhine, listed by town, with addresses and phone numbers and e-mail addresses and websites:

http://www.welterbe-mittelrheintal.d...ype=97&L=0

Thank you all for your replies! The links were very helpful.

Russ, thanks so much about the tip about the ferry to St. Goarshausen. The wine tasting in the old city tower sounds perfect for us. It is great to know about something like this that will be so close.

Thanks again everyone! Laurie

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Laurie---the train goes from the Koln/Bonn airport to St. Goar in about 2 hours (change at Koblenz).

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I would agree with Russ about his recommendation to see the Marksburg. The one advantage to taking the boat to Braubach is that the trolley to the castle meets the boat. If you come in by train and miss the trolley, it is a climb up to the castle. However, I did it two years ago when I was 59, and it only took me 20-25 minutes.

However, walk down from the castle and go through the old town. There are some lovely old Fachwerk buildings there.

I found the boat to be tediously slow, particularly going up river. A good plan might be to take the train to Boppard; then the boat is a short trip (30 min) to Braubach, rather than 1 hr 25 min from St. Goar. The K-D dock is not too hard to find from the Boppard station. Just gravitate down to the water, then walk up river to the dock. Boppard has a lovely riverside park/walk. Or, if you want to spend some time in Boppard, turn right out of the station and follow that road to the town square. Then the boat dock is a few blocks away on the river.

You can see all the castles on the right bank on the way to Boppard. Then come back by train from Braubach to St. Goarshausen. There are not so many castles to see on the left bank, but Boppard from across the river is impressive.

I took the boat from St. Goar to Bacharach. It is definitely the most scenic part of the river, but I was still disappointed. The Lorelei is, quite frankly, a big cliff, and you can see it just as well from the train between St. Goar and Bacharach. The mid-river toll castle, Pfalzgrafenstein, however, was nice to see up close from the river. If you do take the boat from Bacharach to St. Goar, go in that direction. It is a lot faster downriver.

My recommendation would be to try to see something of the Mosel River while you're there. We found it more scenic than the Rhine.

I second a stop on the Mosel. Very pretty.

MY

Michelle Y or Mimar---is there a particular town on the Mosel you would recommend? Accesible by train? I have been looking into this area as a "first night" stop (from the Frankfurt airport), and at least in the photos I have seen the Mosel is a lovely river, much more so than the "industrial" Rhine. I was thinking of St. Goar before, but what about Cochem? How large a town is it?

enzian: St. Goar has the most scenic position in the entire Rhine Gorge, in my opinion. The vine-and castle-clad cliffs are breath-taking; 3 castles are visible from St. Goar. It's not remotely "industrial"; although a good number of barges are moving up and downriver, I'd say most people find this makes for a unique atmosphere (Mosel has some of these as well.) Cochem is equally beautiful, with its own stunning Reichsburg castle towering above the town, but I like it a bit more than St. Goar for the atmosphere in its old town.

You'll have a great time in either place.


But why limit yourself? If it were my trip, I'd stay in St. Goar overnight to make the first day's trip (often a grueling one, depending on how far you've traveled) shorter, then stop in Cochem the following day for a few hours' visit if you can before you have to move on.

Thanks, Russ, that is most helpful. Since St. Goar is the shorter journey from Frankfurt airport, we may stay with that and try to build in time at the end of the trip for the Mosel. Or maybe I'll start my own thread on the question (after reading everything I can find here, of course!) This will be after an overnight flight from the west coast, so we will be tired, but we like to stay up and get some outdoor exercise (walking) our first day. Best cure for jet lag I know.

Go with Russ & Larry's advice. They always give great suggestions

MY

If you do decide to visit the Mosel area, I would suggest Cochem as a base.
It's a wonderful city, with a lovely river promenade, castle, and some great restaurants. It's beautiful and an easy train trip from the Rhine area.

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