We are planning a trip to the Rhine river area and would like help on where best to stay for 3-4 days and take day trips. Flying in to Frankfurt. Thinking of Mainz or Rudersheim any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Rod

Rod,
the most interesting part of the middle Rhein is between Bingen and Koblenz. I would recommend staying in St. Goar or Bacharach. There are plenty of reasonably priced hotels there and most have English speakers.
I am not personally familiar with Rudesheim. I have heard it is nice, but everything else you want to see is down the river from there.
With 3-4 days, you might want to see the Mosel as well. In that case Koblenz or Braubach might be more convenient for 4 days, or you could move to Cochem for 2 days.
This area is all (except for Bacharach) within the Rhein-Mosel transit district (VRM, www.vrm-info.de). For €18,80 you can get a day ticket, valid all day weekends and after 9 weekdays for all the transit in the district for 2-5 people. You can pay less for a smaller area, but it is more complicated to figure out.
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Larry- great info - do you think the transit ticket is good on KD boats - it may be as any rail ticket between cities on the river is also valid on the boat - the reason railpasses are valid on it i think. Boat schedules: www.k-d.com. Rudesheim is tour bus centrum - very crowded in season - i ditto Larry's more subdued suggestions.

I doubt very much that the K-D boat is included in the VRM ticket. I think that is a special arrangement between Eurail and K-D. I don't see any mention of it on the VRM site. The system map does not show the K-D line as a transportation link.

But why not ask? You would have to ask at the K-D dock as most stations have only ticket machines, no counter.

K-D does indicate that any DB train ticket, valid that day, I would assume, is good for a 20% discount, but I don't know if a Verkehrverbund (transit district) ticket qualifies.

BTW, you will notice that the bahn website does not give prices for travel within the Verkehrsverbünden. For that information, you have to go to the individual Verkehrsverbund website.

thanks Larry - at one time any DB train ticket was good for KD boat travel - thanks for informing me of the change - railpasses valid in Germany still get free passage in 2006.