Sunday in Germany
 

I have been reading that a lot is closed in Germany on Sundays. I'm not sure if that includes tourist towns and I'm not sure if that includes restaurants. Maybe or maybe not all stores.

Could those in the know give me an idea which of my daily itineraries will be least affected on Sundays.

a) We arrive in Frankfurt and we'll go directly to our base of Mainz. Unless there's a really good reason for this to be a Sunday itinerary we'll probably stay in Mainz on the first day that's a Friday.

b) Rhine day cruise followed by wandering around Boppard and maybe Bacharach. Will these tourist towns be affected by Sunday?

c) We'll go to Koblenz and probably stop in Oberwesel for a while on the way back to Mainz. We may or may not go to Marksberg.

d) Day trip to Heidelberg.

e) Worms, Eltville, Wiesbaden. Slight possibility of ending in Darmstadt though unlikely.

I would really appreciate opinions as to which will be least affected by Sunday.

Thanks

Tourist towns likely to have tourist-oriented shops open but otherwise regular stores will close and i believe must according to law - train stations however will have mini markets open day and night.

Restaurants are open on Sundays. Most shops will be closed in most places, but there are exceptions.

I imagine souvenir stores in tourist towns.?

What about bike rental in Boppard? etc

To me, the Mosel is a better biking venue - take train to Cochem and rent bikes at station - cycle back to Koblenz train station where you can return the railway bike rental - used to be but check first. Stop by Burg Eltz, one of Germany's most famous castles- high above the Mosel.

https://www.google.com/search?q=mose...w=1280&bih=625

The Rhine bike paths are at times along busy roads and railways - I'd advise to cycle on the east side of gorge with secondary roads and a regional train line.

Best deal may be to take the K-D.com boats and rent bikes from them to cycle between docks and catch any K-D boat going in either direction.

I don't think any of the bike shops are open on Sunday; I just googled "Fahrradverleih Boppard" (bike rental Boppard) and found this:

https://www.boppard-tourismus.de/79-0-Radverleih.html

It says the days of the week that bike rentals are open but not Sundays, although it does say that if you ring one of the shops on the mobile number that reservation is possible daily (the shop on the right). I don't know if this includes Sundays. Perhaps you could ring and check.

Bakeries are open on Sunday mornings till 11am so you can get your bread and coffee fix :) . Restaurants will be open, as will the tourist shops. Churches are busy on Sunday but are open. But where to spend Sunday? I think I would rather be in an area where there is no need for shops (such as viewing the Lorelei or just taking in the towns visually). I think you could happily spend the day on the Rhine that day but for the bikes. Rüdesheim (at the bend of the river, not far from Eltville) will have heaps of shops open because it is a tourist hub, including wine tasting. Save Wiesbaden for a day when the shops are open. If you get the right train ticket you can get on and off the trains at all the stations along the Rhine, including all the little towns near Eltville (the Rheingau). There you will find many little restaurants and wineries which will be open. Shops in the Rheingau are not so interesting, although Eltville is the big town there and there are more shops in that area. If you go as far as Wiesbaden-Biebrich on the Rhine then you can visit the castle (Schloss Biebrich), which is almost on the water's edge, and that will be open Sundays too.

Lavandula

Again did same as lav. and all the two bike rentals said "closed' meaning when i was on their site- go to the site tomorrow, Sunday and see if they are open during the day. Returning your bike before closing is something to know or keep it a few nights.

The German is actually pretty clear that the two bike shops are not open on Sundays as they offer more than just rental but I don't know if the Fundgrube shop makes an exception for reserved bikes - that is not clear. And if you just google bike rental Boppard there are actually three shops that come up in a panel at the top of the page, Lüdicke, Fundgrube and Ralf Schichau, none of which seem to be open on a Sunday.

Lavandula

Thanks for the responses. I now think I have it figured out.

Lavandula,

Thanks for the excellent info.

Which train ticket would be the correct one?

How late would the stores in Wiesbaden be open (excluding Sundays)?

A regional pass could be the best deal - unlimited travel on regional trains and city transports for a day a about 35 e for up to five people or so on one pass. But if just traveling a short distance regular tickets would probably be better. In any case use regional trains that are dirt cheap and have no reservations possible and no reason to buy ahead - flat fare. Buy at stations. when buy ask if you need to cancel your own tickets and how before boarding.

for lots on German trains www.bahn.de/en; www.seat61.com; www.budgeteuropetravel.com and www.ricksteves.com.

Shops in Wiesbaden - the Karstadt (a department store) in Kirchgasse (street name) is open from 9:30am - 8pm Mon-Fri, but only until 7pm on Sat. Shops in the Lilien-Carré, which is a big shopping centre next to the railway station open at various hours but all close at 8pm. You will find bakeries and Apotheken (drugstores which sell only medicine) will open earlier than the rest. You can recognise Apotheken by a green cross.

Looking into the rail ticket but PalenQ has given you good information there, which I might be able to add to a little.

Lavandula

You want a group day ticket on the regional trains. The ticket you buy will depend on where you are when you buy it. The Rheinland-Pfalz ticket covers the whole of Rheinland-Pfalz (left Rhine bank), including the areas Wiesbaden and Rüdesheim, the Hessen ticket you would buy on the right bank of the Rhine and covers you for the whole of that right-bank (Wiesbaden and Rüdesheim) to Mainz. I would just confirm this with your hotel concierge. The ticket is good for up to 5 people and the cost depends on which ticket you buy - I think you pay 36 Euros for the Hessen ticket and the R-P ticket is cheaper. But for that day you can travel as much as you like, hop on and off as desired. Use the Regionalbahn rather than the ICE or IC trains, your ticket won't be valid for those.

Lavandula

Lavendula,
Thanks.

I think Sunday will be me going to Worms alone quite early and meet up with my wife just before noon.
Then we;ll go to Eltville. Then maybe Biebrich. Then maybe Frankfurt - Romer.. Or maybe Rudesheim at the start. We'll see.
If she decides to come with me then we'll leave a couple of hours later.

We'll go to Heidelberg on Monday and Koblenz Tuesday. For some reason I'm thinking we'll finish with Koblenz earlier than we'll finish with Heidelberg.
So maybe after returning from Koblenz we'd go to Wiesbaden.

All this assumes that after the river cruise from Mainz to Boppard on Saturday we'll spend several hours each in Boppard and Bacharach.

I wonder if St Goar/Oberwesel is overkill. I guess if a couple of weeks after the trip we can't differentiate one town from the other then we went to too many.

Hi Myer, so your trip looks something like this:

Fri - arrival and jet lag (Mainz)
Sat - Mainz - Boppard river cruise, see Bacharach on the way
Sun - Worms, Eltville, (Biebrich) / Frankfurt or Rüdesheim, Eltville, Biebrich
Mon - Heidelberg
Tues - Koblenz, Wiesbaden

Where were you proposing to fit in St.-Goar and Oberwesel? Or do you have another day?

That Sunday is packed - places that work well together would be Rüdesheim, Eltville, Biebrich, Wiesbaden (all on the same train line) or Frankfurt instead of Wiesbaden, but Koblenz and Wiesbaden will work together just fine. Here is a link to a page about the railway line linking Frankfurt and Koblenz (Rheingaulinie) with regional trains: Fahrplan & Strecke - RheingauLinie I know it's in German but if you use Google Chrome as the browser you can get pages translated by going into the settings, plus there are graphics of the train line.

If you pick Frankfurt - if you have been seeing lots of half-timbered houses then you could see the Römer briefly and go onto Frankfurt-Sachsenhausen for dinner at one of the applewine pubs like Dauth-Schneider (still original buildings in that part of the world). Then you have a pleasant and authentic Frankfurt experience with local food and drink specialities. Worms is an outlier for that Sunday - better to combine Worms with Heidelberg, although Heidelberg will keep you busy by itself. When were you proposing to see Mainz? Because you won't see much that Friday, you will be tired. And Mainz is worth some of your time too, maybe more than Koblenz (IMO). Even if you just had dinners there you would miss the churches and museums that are only open by day.

You could potentially tack Biebrich on to your cruise day as you can get there by boat.

Just a few thoughts.

Lavandula

Lavandula,

Thank you very much for your time and very helpful suggestions.

On Saturday we'll take the cruise from Mainz to Boppard and spend as much time as we want in Boppard and Bacharach. I don't want to rush Boppard and Bacharach but possibly we'll end up going to Oberwesel also. But I doubt it.

Sunday caused a bit of an issue.

I'm assuming that on Tuesday we'll probably leave Koblenz early enough to stop somewhere for a few hours. Without a Sunday that "somewhere" probably would have been Oberwesel.
So Wiesbaden won out over Oberwesel especially if Boppard and Bacharach work out well on Saturday. Given that we will have been to Boppard and Bacharach does it make sense to skip Oberwesel in favor of Wiesbaden?

On Monday we're planning on going to Heidelberg. I'm assuming Heidelberg will keep us busy a lot longer than Koblenz will so we won't have time to make a stop for a few hours. Is this a correct assumption?
I don't want to come home and not remember where we were so a bit less might be better than a bit too much.

That leaves Sunday which I purposely left to the end.

I considered combining Worms with Heidelberg but when I compared the time to train from Worms to Heidelberg or from Mainz to Heidelberg there was no advantage to putting them together. Even though they are mostly in the same direction.

This could change once my wife does her reading. I intend to leave my wife sleeping in on Sunday (I'm an early person but she is not). I expect to meet up with her in Mainz by noon after I return from Worms.

I spent some time watching Youtube and Rudesheim keeps losing. Did I miss something and I'm wrong.

So I'll meet up with my wife around noon and we'll go to Eltville. Other than it's castle I really don't have a feel for Eltville. I don't know if there's enough to keep us wandering for several hours or not. Then we could train over to Biebrich. You mentioned taking a boat there on our cruise day. How would we do that. The intention is to get on the boat in Mainz and stay on until Boppard. Something I somehow don't see?

I'm not sure why but Frankfurt got relegated to the end of the line. I only inserted the Romer if we had time to kill. I may not have given Frankfurt its due? In any case it won't get much of our limited time.

As to Mainz. Being tired and jet lagged really isn't much of a concern. As we get older we've started to pamper ourselves more. On our last few trips we've been fine on the arrival day. We had a bit of an issue arriving in Paris last year. The taxi driver got squeezed by a bus and his mirror was broken. Every couple of minutes he stopped the car and tried to fix it. I don't usually get car sick but a ride from the airport to Sainte Germain des Pret taking well over 2 hours was not great. I think we'll do fine in Mainz on the first day.

If we find we'd like more time in Mainz we could spend an hour or two there on Sunday before going to Eltville. Or we could possibly leave Koblenz earlier.

If I have to make a choice between Wiesbaden and Mainz on a non-Sunday which do you think?

I think I wrote too much.

​​​​​​​Thanks again.

I meant to write that Chrome is the browser I use so I realize it will translate.

I'll check out that link in the morning.

>Given that we will have been to Boppard and Bacharach does it make sense to skip Oberwesel in favor of Wiesbaden?

I'm not the best person to comment on Oberwesel, I don't really know it, but someone else here will chip in, I'm sure. Wiesbaden is a big city - I have written a bit about it below.

>I'm assuming Heidelberg will keep us busy a lot longer than Koblenz will so we won't have time to make a stop for a few hours. Is this a correct assumption?

Yes, there is lots to see and do in Heidelberg. I haven't been for a long time but it is a good destination and quite different to the other towns you will be seeing. I think there was a fire or a war there some centuries back and so the architecture is 17th / 18th century and not half-timbered houses like on the Rhine. There is a wonderful castle on the hill, a big wine barrel and a zoo, plus the town itself is quite pretty, a beautiful bridge over the Neckar. I don't think I'd sandwich in anything else on that day, you have enough to do with Heidelberg. But no danger of not remembering Heidelberg, it's quite distinct. I personally found less to do in Koblenz; after seeing the confluence of the rivers and having lunch we didn't find much to keep us there.

>I spent some time watching Youtube and Rudesheim keeps losing. Did I miss something and I'm wrong.

No, you aren't wrong - Rüdesheim polarises people in the same way that Rothenburg odT polarises people. It's the place where tour buses disgorge huge numbers of tourists who all then get on the waiting Rhine river boats. It is both good and bad. It has a lot of businesses which cater to the tourist industry and everything will be open on a Sunday, but of course you then have to deal with the tourists there. It is pretty (Drosselgasse is the main street), and has some great shops like the Käthe Wohlfahrt shop for Christmas decorations (open year round, but spendy), and wine tasting if you are not going into the Rheingau (which you might be according to your itinerary). If you are prepared to go uphill there is the Niederwalddenkmal with views of the whole Rhine (there is also a cable car), and nearby is Brömserburg which has a wine museum. There is also the Asbach Uralt brandy factory. I am not a particular lover of Rüdesheim, but seeing it depends on your personal tourism style - do you want to hit the "must sees" and are you prepared to encounter many tourists, or do you prefer to hit the off-the-beaten-path sights, avoiding the tourists but then not having your war stories of the "must-sees" when you go home to tell friends what you saw? Your call!

There are a bunch of other things you can do in the area which IMO are equally good and are less visited by foreign tourists - Kloster Eberbach, a medieval monastery where part of The Name of the Rose was filmed; Schloss Johannisberg with its views (Goethe, the German Shakespeare, visited it - go for an amazing foodie experience); Schloss Vollrads; the castle in Eltville. Eltville itself is pretty and has the castle but it is pocket sized and its beauty is not as a destination by itself but as one of a number of destinations along the railway line there. Locals from the surrounding districts do a tavern crawl getting off at the various Strausswirtschaften (summer pubs) and either walking between the towns or taking the train. The Strausswirtschaften (or Besenwirtschaften) are not open year round but in the summer and on into the harvest season and have light meals and their own wine from the surrounding hills. There are also good restaurants in the area. So Eltville is good as one of the stops along the railway line in the Rheingau but for me it's just one of the stops and won't occupy a whole day. That would be why you would want a Rheinland-Pfalz Länderticket, to be able to hop on and off at will.

>Then we could train over to Biebrich. You mentioned taking a boat there on our cruise day. How would we do that. The intention is to get on the boat in Mainz and stay on until Boppard. Something I somehow don't see?

Yes, the KD boats returning from Boppard (i.e. going south) can stop in Biebrich (just across the river from Mainz) and if you go to their website you can work out a timetable. I assume you will want to come back in the same direction eventually.

>I'm not sure why but Frankfurt got relegated to the end of the line. I only inserted the Romer if we had time to kill. I may not have given Frankfurt its due? In any case it won't get much of our limited time.

Hm, again, Frankfurt polarises people. I don't mind it but it's a big city which has pockets of charm and is not as big a drawcard as Mainz IMO. I would rather spend the time seeing Mainz than Frankfurt but again that's because it speaks to my interests. The Römer is only a little enclave (rebuilt after WWII) which obviously gets a lot of tourist focus. There are other points of interest (the museum riverbank for one) but if you didn't see it all I doubt you would have big regrets.

>If I have to make a choice between Wiesbaden and Mainz on a non-Sunday which do you think?

I am a little biased because I lived in Wiesbaden for several years but I would have to say Mainz because I think there is more for the foreign tourist there. Wiesbaden is beautiful - all of its 19th century neighbourhoods were unspoilt by WWII whereas Mainz sustained real damage - but there are better museums and churches in Mainz, and Mainz has the better old city. Wiesbaden has a casino and the thermal baths, plus hot springs all over the city which you can actually drink from (but not the Bäckerbrunnen, it comes out of the ground at 60 degrees celsius and you will scald your hands), plus it is a good venue for classical music. But no, I think I will stick with Mainz if I had to choose. And both have good shopping opportunities, no real winner there.

OK, fingers officially dropping off now :) !

Lavandula

Lavandula,
Again, thank you very much.

Our original choice of Mainz as a base was because of it's location. Close to Frankfurt airport, smaller than Frankfurt, on the Rhine, etc. We never thought of it as a destination itself. I guess that perception should change a little.

For Sunday, I think we'll skip Rudesheim and Frankfurt. I will look into a few stops in addition to Eltville and Biebrich.

I think Koblenz day may be short in Koblenz and we'll go to Wiesbaden for a while and then spend more time in Mainz. For specific places we could most likely get there (Mainz) on our first day. Then for wandering we will make some time on Sunday and Tuesday (the day we go to Koblenz, then Wiesbaden and back to Mainz.

I have no idea how much time we'll want to spend in Boppard and Bacharach after the cruise so we'll see how that goes.

We don't have to come home and report to anybody about seeing all of the must sees.

Last year as part of a trip that mostly included Paris (our two favorite cities are Paris and New York and we've been to each maybe half a dozen times) we spent 3 days in the Loire Valley visiting chateaux. So a couple of more being seen or not is fine either way.

Just to add something different. We were in Paris the evening of the World Cup semi final (in Russia but France won the whole thing) and after the game I joined the crowds in the streets. Then a few days later we were in Tours (Loire Valley - Chateaux country) the day of the final and again joined the crowds after the game

Back to Wiesbaden vs Mainz. I think we'll go to the Gutenberg museum but in general we're less museum goers and more wandering nice areas. So maybe Wiesbaden deserves it's time. One of the reason we like stores open is not really for shopping, though my wife will spend some time doing that, but so the place doesn't have an abandoned feel to it. We do not view tourists as an evil. We are tourists.

One last thing. Can you suggest a few towns in addition to Eltville that we should stop in for an hour or so each. While we walk a lot, up big hills are not first on our list.

And again, thank you very much for your great insight.

"but so the place doesn't have an abandoned feel to it" This applies to many (not all) US towns and cities where the centers are mostly dead on Sundays. It's quite different in Germany, at least in nice weather. When the stores are closed Germans do all kinds of things in their town and city centers not the least of which is window shopping in the main streets.

Rather than suggesting many more towns - as you already have quite a lot - I will point you in the direction of the paragraph I wrote about things you can do in the Rheingau (Kloster Eberbach, bus from Eltville, Schloss Johannisberg), Strausswirtschaften the summer taverns or cellar doors https://www.rheingau.de/gastronomie/strausswirtschaften - here is a complete list of them for the Rheingau, with many names of towns where you would stop on the way between Rüdesheim and Frauenstein. You need a map to plot your pathway at this point https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/vi...7yUU_ZiVYDOssU. If you finish early then you can just keep going up the railway line to Wiesbaden and that's your day done. If you really get stuck then I suppose a half-day in Idstein or Limburg an der Lahn would make a nice adventure; change trains in Wiesbaden. Nice cities with half-timbered houses, both on the Half-Timbered House Route (Deutsche Fachwerkstrasse). Or else spend a bit more time on the middle Rhine, perhaps on the other Rhine bank from the previous day (i.e. the right bank - Braubach and St Goarshausen). That should be enough to fill your day amply, but for the Rheingau you have enough individual little towns to fill a whole day and you shouldn't need to zip off elsewhere. Remember you also potentially have Frankfurt to visit, which you could do in the evening, and Worms I assume will fit in somewhere too.

You are bound to like Wiesbaden and Mainz. The shopping street in Wiesbaden is Kirchgasse. It is quite a way from the railway station so if you don't want to walk - and it's a pleasant walk - then catch a bus. 4 or 14 go directly to Dernsches Gelände, and from there you are already in the shopping district and can easily get to Kirchgasse.

Yes, agree with Swabian - in Germany on a Sunday people dress up and promenade in the parks and the pedestrian zones of the old city in their towns. Sunday is not a day to mow the lawn or do mechanical work on your car, it's a quiet family day.

Lavandula