Dear Friends,

Me and my wife are planning a week long holiday in end of October and Frankfurt and i have a couple of questions and will be thankful for some advice.

1. we were thinking of having our base at Frankfurt OR Mainz and do day trips to nearby sites. I read that Mainz is a better option as it is more picturesque, small and beautiful and easily accessible to Frankfurt airport too. We are arriving and departing from Frankfurt. Is basing ourselves on Mainz a good option. We will be using public transport for all our travels.

2. we plan to do day trips to Koblenz, Black Forest, Heidelberg etc.

3. We also plan to do Freiburg and Rothenburg. Im confused that should we stay in Mainz/Frankfurt for 4 days and 2 days in Freiburg OR just do a day trip to Freiburg from Mainz/ Frankfurt. Same for Rothenburg too.

4. Is there any other must visit Town that we should do (We have visited Cologne earlier).

5. We love old towns, beautiful cafes, medival style and beautiful Bars etc...

Thank you in advance....

I agree with your source that Mainz is a better option than Frankfurt. Frankfurt has its unpleasant areas, which Mainz doesn't, but there are still things to see in Frankfurt, particularly the museum riverbank and the applewine pubs. Mainz also has some good points - a thousand year old cathedral (Mainzer Dom), the Chagall windows at the Stefansdom, the museum for ancient shipbuilding (the ancient history here is Roman settlement of the city), and a museum of printing (Gutenberg pioneered movable type). Mainz is also closer to the middle Rhine gorge where you can do cruises and stop off at the small towns. You can also do this by train.

A day trip to Freiburg and Rothenburg would be a long journey from Mainz, but Freiburg would be tolerable. Perhaps you could get a second base in the south (maybe Tübingen or Heidelberg?) to see each of these. Rothenburg in particular is a long journey from anywhere as it is in kind of a rail cul-de-sac with infrequent trains, so I suggest you look into this a little using bahn.com .

Lavandula

I might just add that Mainz is not small - it is a full-sized city which did badly during the war in patches, so there are some large empty spaces, but has an intact old town. So don't go thinking it will be like the Rhine villages, it's much bigger.

Lavandula

cheers victor, IMHO that's a lot of area you are trying to cover there, e.g. the Black Forest is an extensive uplands, hardly anything you can knock off in a day or two. technically, it will be doable to transfer between these places within your timeframe, but maybe you should try and straighten up your itinerary so it only encompasses the places you most importantly want to see. I concur that Mainz is an enjoyable place to stay, however given the dense transport network, the location of your accomodation is probably not as vital as it looks at first glance. consider turning it the other way round: check sites like booking.com or airbnb for nice places to stay, then check how accessible they are.

noticed you did not return to your last thread in April - do not forget that feedback/dialogue is what makes this forum worthwhile for both sides.