songdoc - Prague would be a good fit for your interests and by the looks of it, not too much of a pain to get to.

other similar options would be Budapest, Vienna, and Krakow.

any by themselves or in combination would interest you a lot i think.

At the moment, Prague is in 1st place. But I don't need to book it for a while, so I'll keep looking. That's half the fun ;-)

How about Berlin? Or Krakow? I am heading to both soon.

Early March..
southern Spain

G'day Songdoc

I think you and the other half would love Lisbon. It's not as touristed as some, and there are plenty of things to do and see and some good short train trips. I went to Porto for a couple of days from Lisbon, about 3 hours by train.

Mind you, Prague was pretty good, too - but I want to go back to Lisbon.

Thanks, Margo. It's nice hearing from you. I appreciate the recommendation.

danon--the weather's not going to be a deciding factor. Because we go after the annual festival in Ireland, we always go early March. We dress warmly and have enjoyed walking through every inch of quite a few European cities despite the cold. It snowed in Paris and was gorgeous! This past March, the highs were in the low 40s in Amsterdam, but that didn't stop us from walking so much that DH got shin splints! (I got them the previous year from climbing towers in Italy.)

I'm lucky that this is an annual trip -- so hopefully, I will get to see many of these cities.

<<We enjoy walking through quaint areas, exploring old buildings (i.e., castles), museums, music, a bit of history...>>

We found Prague to be crammed with tourists when we visited in mid-May, and there seemed to be a lot of vendors catering to tourists. By crammed, I mean throngs of people jammed into narrow streets not at all equipped to handle the volume. That said, we had a good time for three days, but were not sad to leave.

On the other hand, we had a fabulous time Budapest (also 4 nights) and could easily have enjoyed ourselves for another week. We plan to return, which is very unusual for us given how many new places there are to explore. Budapest is very inexpensive -- probably the cheapest place we have experienced so far in Europe (including Lisbon).

Happy hunting!

Sounds to me like Bavaria should be at the top of the list. Plenty of Ludwig castles, museums and history. Munich is a good base with side trips to Salzburg, Neuschwanstein, Rothenburg, Dachau, etc. Munich itself has a lot to offer from the Deutches Museum, BMW museum, Englisher Garten and the beer halls.