Trip to Heidelberg Next Week
 

I just found out that I would be in Heidelberg next week for a work-related training class. I'm leaving on Friday so that I can do some sight seeing (yes I realize it's January) over the weekend. I have visited Heidelberg before and am interested in in visiting another area relatively nearby. I was considering Bad Wimpfel but it looks like many of their attractions are not even open in the winter. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Have you been to Schwäbisch Hall? It's a beautiful medieval walled city. It seems fairly close on the map, but I'm not sure exactly how far it is, never having driven there from Heidelberg. However, there is autobahn almost all the way from Heidelberg.

Der Adelshof is a good hotel that has a very good dining room.

Mannheim also has some nice spots and things to see, by streetcar maybe an hour, by train maybe twenty minutes.

Frankfurt and Stuttgart are in reach by train within an hour.

Frankfurt has not only to offer a skyline (quite impressive for Germans, quite boring for New Yorkers) ans a town hall with imitated halftimbering but also an intersting range of museums.

Stuttgart`s Central Station might well symbolize the spirit to be found there: busy, effective, no-nonsense. But their museums are also part of the city, as Staatsgalerie.

Along River Neckar you will find a number of smaller towns quite typical for the region. But January usually brings bad weather, so you better look out for indoor activities instead of sightseeing.

If you like to see an exposition of motordriven vehicles, you will find there exhibited at Technikmuseum Sinsheim. A quite expressive collection to be found there, visit their homepage. Sinsheim is located between Stuttgart and Heidelberg.

I would endorse the advice of the previous poster. It might be to your advantage to take the train to these locations. Go to www.bahn.de and enter your data. On weekends they have a special ticket for travel on local trains if you only plan short trips.

Bad WimpfeN is a lovely town. We stayed there for 3 nights in May. Just walking through the town and seeing all the medieval buildings was worth the trip. In addition, parts of the imperial palace and old towers dating from 1200 are still in tact! While it may be cold for outdoor sightseeing, it would definitely be worth it in Bad Wimpfen. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip.

We also visited Schwaebisch Hall as a day trip from Bad Wimpfen. It's a much larger town, but the old part is very nice. We also did Dinkelsbuhl as a daytrip from BW and thoroughly enjoyed it also.

If you click on my name, you can find my trip report from June 05 with more details on what we saw during this part of our trip.

bumping this for any feedback on traveling in Germany during January. Is driving recommended, or is the weather too dicey to attempt it?

I'm contemplating a January trip to towns near Stuttgart/Frankfurt.