kschmitty

We are taking our granddaughter on a very quick trip, from Paris to either Munich or Strasberg, via Switzerland, in 12 days, the end of May, 2022. It’d an overview trip, and not meant to be an in-depth trip. We’ll be stopping into Frankfurt for a couple days. Any suggestions on how to do this, where to stop and spend some extra time, and whether or not to meet her parents in Munich, or Austria, would be greatly appreciated.

neckervd

Do you plan to go from Paris to Frankfurt and then to either Munich or Strassberg, a tiny hamlet close to Arosa (Switzerland)? But what's about Austria?

swandav2000

Hi kschmitty,

Do you mean Salzburg?

How many nights will you spend there? The full 12 nights?

Hope to hear some clarification soon --

s

kschmitty

Oh geez! I mistyped. Salzburg, Austria! My apologies!

kschmitty

Yes. I either mistyped, or Siri autocorrected. Salzburg, Austria. We will be traveling for a full 12 nights, then meeting up with family for another 2-3 nights.

Jean

Sorry, but it's still not clear. Is it Paris to "Switzerland" to Salzburg (and/or Munich?) to Frankfurt? Or is Frankfurt somewhere in the middle?

Where are the parents coming from? Would meeting them in Munich or "Austria" mean not going to Frankfurt?

bilboburgler

I think the route is Paris, Frankfurt am Main, Salzburg or Munich (NB there are at least two Frankfurts in Germany

Paris to Frankfurt by train is 4 hours, nice journey
Frankfurt to Salzburg is 5.5 hours but the train passes through Munich.

Where would I stop, Wurzburg, Reims or detour to the Mosel

tomboy

Kschmidty- have you looked at any brochures, read any library books on travel, distilled any interests in these large cities you mention?
(personally, I think central Frankfurt isn't much different than central Chicago/Detroit/Berlin/ Brussels, other the the office buildings are different ages.

But if one has no interest in art, or history, or regional food...................

Jean

The "via Switzerland" comment made me think Frankfurt was after Munich/Salzburg... but who knows.

lavandula

Your itinerary is all over the shop. If you spend 4 days in Paris, 4 days in Frankfurt (use as a base for the middle Rhine gorge, Mainz, the apple wine pubs in Sachsenhausen and the museum riverbank), and some days in Munich, possibly with a side trip, then that is your 12 days used up. Subtract a day for every time you change location. If you need to add in Salzburg, that is over 100 km from Munich, so you could do it as a long day trip, but I assume you will have to get home from somewhere, so you could just keep going on to Vienna for an airport home. I don't think Switzerland fits in well with what you have put forward.

So a journey might look like this:

Day 1: Arr Paris (jetlag)
Day 2: Paris
Day 3: Paris
Day 4: Paris
Day 5: transit; evening in Sachsenhausen
Day 6: orientation - morning in Frankfurt, afternoon in Mainz
Day 7: Rhine cruise or train trip
Day 8: transit; evening in Munich
Day 9: Munich
Day 10: transit to Salzburg
Day 11: Salzburg
Day 12: transit to Vienna Schwechat Airport and home.

It is a long time since I was in Munich but I can help you a bit with the Frankfurt portion. Many people don't like Frankfurt because it is mostly a modern city but there are pockets of charm there and it is a good seat for excursions. Play around with the timings in Germany and Austria a bit and try not to give yourself one-nighters anywhere, that is inconvenient because you have to pack and unpack. I am short-changing Munich a bit but doubtless there will be some suggestions on the basis of this framework. I suppose I should also ask when you are doing this trip as crossing borders is currently a pain and you might be better off limiting your trip to just two countries.

Lavandula

lavandula

Oh, I see, you said May 2022 - well, keep checking the conditions for travel between various countries. May is a long way off, but the requirement to test may eat into your travel plans a bit so factor that into your thinking.

Lavandula

kschmitty

Okay, i see i need to clarify our trip, and intentions. My apologies to everyone. We are landing in Paris, then our final destination is, hopefully Schmittenhohe, Austria. If we can get there by train or bus, that would be our preferred destination. If that is the case, we would not need to go to Frankfurt, Germany, especially since it is totally out of the desired path of travel. My husband and I have already been to Frankfurt, and truly don’t need to go again. The only reason we would go there, is if we can’t get into our destination in Austria. This is all about visiting the areas in Europe where my husband’s family originated from, close to Frankfurt, and Schmittenhohe.

We don’t know, as of yet, where we would meet our son and his wife. They would like to go to Schmittenhohe with us, but we need to figure out the closest location for them to fly into, from the United States.

We would like to spend some quality time in France, and then a couple days in Switzerland. We do not intend to rent a car. We would travel, fairly exclusively, by train. If we needed to, we would travel by bus, as well, or private driver.

lavandula

OK, I am still a bit confused then - you want time in France (but where? Paris is not it?), Switzerland (also where?), somewhere close to Frankfurt but not Frankfurt, and Schmittenhöhe, which I have just googled - it is the local mountain to the resort Zell am See, in the Salzburger Land. Can you be a bit more specific about where near Frankfurt? It seems like a logical place for your family to fly into if you will be near there as it is a European air hub, but I understand if you don't want to stay there. Plus I saw you actually have more than 12 days - that could make a big difference.

Lavandula

lavandula

I think most of your trip should be accessible via train. Zell am See is on a train line, and you can get there from Salzburg or Munich in 1.5 (Salzburg) or 3 hours (Munich). Closest airport for your relatives to Zell am See would be Salzburg, but that is a smaller airport, and I don't know which city your family would be flying out from to suggest anything there. For people coming from my country the logical entry point would be Frankfurt and then a side trip to Salzburg via Lufthansa or Austrian. You would have to transfer from the airport to central Salzburg by bus for the train station, but in winter a lot of people would be doing this trip so I think the pathways are established.

Lavandula

kschmitty

I could not go in and edit my last post, so here it is, with more additions:

Okay, i see i need to clarify our trip, and intentions. My apologies to everyone. We are landing in Paris, then our final destination is, hopefully Schmittenhohe, Austria. If we can get there by train or bus, that would be our preferred destination. If that is the case, we would not need to go to Frankfurt, Germany, especially since it is totally out of the desired path of travel. My husband and I have already been to Frankfurt, and truly don’t need to go again. The only reason we would go there, is if we can’t get into our destination in Austria. This is all about visiting the areas in Europe where my husband’s family originated from, close to Frankfurt, and Schmittenhohe. We have already been to his family place near Frankfurt, so would prefer to not visit there again. We would rather visit the area around Schmittenhohe, which, as you all probably already know is the mountain near Zell am See.

We don’t know, as of yet, where we would meet our son and his wife. They would like to go to Schmittenhohe with us, but we need to figure out the closest location for them to fly into, from the United States.

We would like to spend some quality time in France, both in Paris, as well as some of the countryside, and then a couple days in Switzerland. We do not intend to rent a car. We would travel, fairly exclusively, by train. If we needed to, we would travel by bus, as well, or private driver.

When i mentioned 12 days, that is just us with our granddaughter, alone. Then, we would meet up with our son and his wife for two more days. We just need to be back in Paris the morning of the 15.

lavandula

OK, well - what about this:

Paris - Lyon (because it's on the way and it makes a good foodie long weekend) - somewhere in Switzerland (caveat: I have been to Switzerland but I think I don't know enough to advise you on it, but perhaps a couple of destinations there) - Salzburg - Zell am See - exit via Vienna or Munich.

There are trains which will take you to Salzburg from Lyon, and one routing goes: Lyon Part Dieu - Geneva - Zürich - Salzburg. But it still takes about 10 hours, so I would definitely break up the journey across Switzerland. There is another routing via Germany but you gain nothing by it in terms of hours. But maybe you would rather have some stops in Switzerland. Have a look at bahn.com , which is the German railways website. You can use it for routings anywhere in Europe.

Your family can still land in Frankfurt am Main and transfer to a Salzburg flight without leaving the airport, so no-one has to go to Frankfurt if they don't want (advantage: lots of planes go to Frankfurt). You can take an open-jaw flight from your home airport to Paris and leave via Vienna or Munich (both are accessible from Salzburg). Hopefully you will get some good suggestions here about Switzerland too.

If you don't want an open jaw, then you might fly back to Paris from Salzburg.

Lavandula

kschmitty

We traveled around Germany four years ago, with our grandson. We spent several nights in Frankfurt, and I don’t feel a need to go there. After hearing from a couple others on this post, i think we’ll skip Frankfurt altogether, and meet our kids in Munich. We will then take a train to Zell am See. The only reason we are flying into Paris is that my husband and I are returning to there, and boarding a river cruise.

lavandula

OK, well, I have given you the tip of www.bahn.com, the second routing that I found was via Mannheim, Munich (München) and Salzburg, but it doesn't take you through Switzerland at all. You could probably break your trip in Munich to meet the kids and continue on to Zell am See. That is, if you wanted to keep Lyon, your call. If your kids fly into Frankfurt and then onto Salzburg you don't need to go there, that change is an airport-internal change and you don't need to be there for that, you could meet them in Salzburg or even Zell am See. Obviously I don't know where your children's home airport is but there might be better flights to Munich that they can exploit, even direct ones (where I live, that's not the case). Every airport has a different magic combination of flights, and it would be helpful for Fodorites if you could say where they are flying from.

Lavandula

swandav2000

Hallo Again

Unfortunately, there are some logistical/distance problems with your plans, as I see it.

First is the flights. I’d advise that, if possible, you do not fly in & out of Paris, as that wastes too much time & money getting to your first destination. If you can, change your arrival flight to Zurich or Geneva if you want to see Switzerland. There are called open-jaw flights, not one-way flights, and you find them under the “multiple destination” tab on the airline's website.

Most folks enjoy seeing the high mountains of Switzerland from, say, a base of Wengen or Grindelwald in the Berner Oberland, or from Zermatt. However, there are not great destinations in May, which can be only muddy; May is after the ski season and before the flower season. Some hotels and restaurants will be shut for their annual vacations, and some cable cars will be shut down for annual maintenance.

A stay at a lake might be better for May – maybe Thun or Lucerne. Then you can enjoy the town and head up to the mountaintop when you get a nice, clear day.

So, here are the train transport times from Paris to some destinations in Switzerland. Some of the times are rounded up.

Paris – Zermatt, 7h30, with 2 changes
Paris – Wengen, 8h, with 4 changes
Paris – Thun, 5h30, with 2 changes
Paris – Luzern, 6-7h, with 1 or 2 changes

Then for your continuing trip to Zell am See, here are the train times:

From Wengen, 14h, with 5 or 6 changes
From Luzern, 8h, with 2 changes
From Zermatt, 14-15h, with 3 or 5 changes
From Thun, 9h, with 2 changes

So you can see that it really isn’t ideal to try to add in a trip to Switzerland. Best, I think, to fly into Munich, enjoy some mountains and towns nearby, then head to Zell am See. If you fly into Paris, the trip to Munich takes about 8h (I live south of Munich and travel to Paris pretty often).

Whatever you decide, use the Bahn website lavandula gave you to check the travel times. It would be a waste, with only 12 days, to spend 2 or 3 of them just in transit.

Good luck as you continue refining your itinerary, and hope to hear more!

s