This summer, Josh and I, were going to visit his family in the US and also travel a bit on the east coast. Our travel plans got changed a bit though because of cancelled flights and the fact that we would have had to stay in quarantine for a total of almost four weeks. Two of those in the US and 10 days in Switzerland.

Instead of going oversees, we decided to travel though Germany and Holland. We bought a ticket called “Interrail” which lets you travel through European countries by train. On this post I will be sharing about our experience in Germany and what we would recommend. By no means are we experts or locals, but I will share what we enjoyed as tourists. You can find the post about Amsterdam here:

Amsterdam

Our main goal of our trip was to make it to Amsterdam, which definitely influenced the travel choices we made in Germany. We started in Zurich and went to Munich for 2 nights. Then we continued our trip to Frankfurt (am Main) and Köln where we also stayed for 2 nights each.

Munich

Munich to us had an interesting mixture of new and traditional things. There is a big shopping area sprinkled in with old historical buildings. One of the towns signature things would be its traditional food and drink. To us it almost felt like you could celebrate Oktoberfest all year round. They serve a great variety of sausages and beers. As a side you’ll often get sauerkraut, a pretzel or potato salad.

Things to see:

Hofbräuhaus (Restaurant, serves traditional food in a beer garden)
Old town Munich (lots of shops and pretty buildings)
Olympia Park (a huge park that was built on the ruins of WW2)
English Garden (another beautiful park)
Schloss Nymphenburg (a big, long, symmetrical castle with a massive park in the back.)
Concentration Camp Dachau (it is just a few minutes outside of Munich)
BMW museum

Where we stayed:

We stayed at Hotel Cocoon Hauptbahnhof. The hotel is themed after the alps. The room we had was clean but very small. They had a rain shower :-) Our favorite part was the breakfast buffet with lots of delicious food options. The hotel is right by the main station which ended up being an advantage and disadvantage. Generally it seems like for Germany locations around the train stations should be avoided. For us there were a lot of riff-raff loitering around and it can be a bit uncomfortable to walk through at night. Luckily for Munich it wasn’t scary or anything. But on the bright side we were right by all the big train stops!

Frankfurt am Main

Josh and I loved Frankfurt. Maybe it was the fact that it reminded us of Zurich with its tall modern buildings, all the banking and the pretty old town. We definitely loved the vibe of the city though. It started with us staying at a great hotel in a super cute area with lots of cafes. The Main (river) was only a 3 minute walk away and in general pretty much everything was only a few steps away. We had some really nice summer days which drew a lot of people to the river to hang out which was so fun. We would totally recommend for people to go to Frankfurt!

Things to see:

The Main (just walk along the river around the center, it’s really relaxing and you can see a lot of interesting things. There might even be something going on, depending on the time/season you spend there. We ordered pizza one of the nights and just ate it there)
Römer in Frankfurt and Römerberg (Beautiful old buildings)
The Cathedral (Due to the pandemic we weren’t allowed to go on top of the tower, but I imagine you’ll get an amazing view from up there)
Euro sign and banking area (just impressive to see all these tall buildings)
Main-Tower
Botanical Garden
Iron bridge
Liebighaus Skulpturensammlung (A museum with a cafe in a garden. It is really peaceful because all the chairs are super spaced out (maybe because of Covid?) but the perfect place to read and relax)

Hotel and Food:

Star Apart Hotel Sachsenhausen was the best hotel ever. We had a huge room and it was super clean and welcoming. Every room is dedicated to a sports person which ended up being pretty silly, as we had a photo of Tiger Woods staring at us. The location was amazing, we were able to walk everywhere and no sketchy people anywhere close by. In Frankfurt you definitely want to avoid the area around the train station at night, so we were happy to stay further away. At the hotel they also had free food in the room as well as a kitchen.

We ordered pizza from a pizzeria called “Dick und Doof l’originiale Sachsenhausen”. It was delicious and it’s nearby the river.

Cologne

Cologne was an interesting experience. We didn’t really fall in love with the city. To be fair, the weather wasn’t amazing (no rain though) but there wasn’t much that excited us about Cologne. The town got pretty much destroyed during WW2 which is why there are hardly any old buildings. The only thing still standing is the Cathedral. There is a huuuge shopping street and apparently Cologne is big for partying. Because of our lack of excitement I also have very few things to share with you. But maybe Josh and I just didn’t see the right places? Also check out other blogs to see, if they found the good places, we missed.

Things to see:

The cathedral
Shopping street
Rhein with Hohenzollern Bridge
Chocolate museum

Food:

Hommage Cafè (serves really yummy breakfast)

Cathedral and Hohenzollern Bridge - Kathedrale und Hohenzollernbrücke — Cathedral and Hohenzollern Bridge

Explore Germany’s Cities by Train