bandol

Hello - I did the exact same trip last summer. My german skills are also much better than my french, so I stayed on the german side as well. I found a wonderful bed and breakfast in Offenburg, a 20 minute drive to Strasbourg. Beautiful surroundings, vineyards and forests everywhere. The place is called Pension Abtsbergblick and their website is at www.abtsbergblick.de The hosts also speak a little bit of english and were quite helpful. Offenburg was a perfect base - 20 minutes to Strasbourg, 20 minutes to Gengenbach, 35 minutes to Baden-Baden. I went to Strasbourg for a day, Baden-Baden and the spas on another day and then I also went into the Black Forest for one day. For that day I took an english-speaking tour guide though which was recommended to me by the owners of the b&b and which turned out to be the right thing to do. their website is quite informative with maps, etc from the region www.the-black-forest.com. I can highly recommend to stay at this b&b and I think your itinieray looks great - 4 days seems like a good lenght also, you will be able to see a lot. Colmar is actually also a very nice town to visit in France, and so is Freiburg in Germany. It's all very close, so no worries of having to drive much.

socialworker

Nothing really to add except that we love Strasbourg and managed to get to one little town, as well, Oberanai. We did not have a car and just took a short train ride. One can do so much more with a car.

However, I do want to comment on the generosity of the Fodorites above as well as the unbelievable wealth of knowledge that they so willingly share! I remember your wonderful input, lavendereye, when DH and I made our trip in '04.

To the OP, have a wonderful trip!!

jgwagner4

Just a quick update and thank you to all those that gave advice!

We found a great looking Ferienwohnung on the site that quokka gave us. It took my wife a while to decide on which one we wanted to stay at, but in the end it is only 3 km from Gengenbach.

We leave on our trip in 3 1/2 weeks and everything is coming together well. I will do a trip report after we return.

Thanks again!