The castle is the postcard. The cities are the holiday.
Which Reichstag slot to register for. What the Speicherstadt boat costs. Whether Dresden beats Cologne when you have one spare day. Reviews of every tour you can book in Germany.
A first German week hangs off four bookings.
The dome, the castle, the harbour and the opera house. What each one costs, how long it takes, and why it will not wait until you are there.
01The Berlin morningReichstag, Dome and Government District Guided TourThe dome is the one Berlin sight that runs on registered time slots. A guided slot books the entry and covers the government quarter on the way in.
02The castle dayNeuschwanstein Castle Tour from MunichTwo hours south of Munich, and castle entry is by timed guided slot only. The coach day takes the timing off your hands.
03The harbour hour1.5-Hour Harbor and Speicherstadt Day CruiseNinety minutes through the working port and the red brick canals of the Speicherstadt. The cheapest way to see why Hamburg looks like that.
04The Dresden eveningSemperoper Tickets and Guided TourTour times move around the rehearsal schedule, so fix this one before you plan the rest of the day around it.
The German day starts in the Altstadt.
Every town here keeps a market square, a town hall with a clock that does something on the hour, and a run of lanes behind it. Four ways to walk them, and what each one costs to join.
Berlin first, then whichever city the train reaches by lunch.
A capital that is mostly twentieth century, a beer city with an Alpine day trip attached, a working port, a baroque town on the Elbe, a cathedral on the Rhine and a skyline of banks. Six places to start, and the best day out in each.
Berlin is spread out, flat, and best taken in pieces.
Everything in Berlin →
The sights sit miles apart along one axis, from the Wall in the east to the palace out at Charlottenburg. Walk the middle, take a boat down the Spree for the stretch nobody wants to walk, and give the museums a morning of their own.
Museum Island, or one museum
Five collections share the island and one pass covers all of them. Worth it over three days, wasted if you only want the Pergamon altar and a coffee.
The Spree, from a deck chair
The river threads past the cathedral, the government quarter and the East Side Gallery. An hour on the water covers ground that takes half a day on foot.
One ticket, the whole axis
Berlin is too spread out to walk end to end. The bus loops Charlottenburg to Alexanderplatz and lets you get off at the bits you actually came for.
What everyone books in Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.
The whole German list →These carry more travellers than anything else in the country. Prices, timings, and what you actually get for the money.
1
Reichstag, Dome and Government District Guided Tour
Tour Berlin’s Reichstag, plenary chamber, government district, and dome with an engaging guide, history, politics, and skyline views.
From · $18
Read our review →
2
1-Hour City Tour by Boat with Guaranteed Seating
from $25
3
Sex and Crime in St. Pauli Tour for Ages 18+
4
1.5-Hour Harbor and Speicherstadt Day Cruise
from $40
5
Neuschwanstein & Linderhof Castle Full-Day Trip
6
Semperoper Tickets and Guided Tour
from $18
7
Boat Tour Along the River Spree
from $34
8
Discover Berlin Half-Day Walking Tour
from $24
Beer halls, Riesling, and a market that only opens in December.
Germany drinks by region. Wheat beer and a brass band in Munich, Kölsch in 200ml glasses in Cologne, Riesling on the Mosel, and mulled wine in the market squares from the last week of November.
In Germany the walking tours cost less than lunch. The castle days do not.
Three price bands, and the tour more people book than any other in each of them.
Old town walks, church and museum entry, the river boats and most of the lantern tours.
The full-day standards: Neuschwanstein by coach, the Rhine castles, a brewery evening with dinner.
Private guides, a car and driver for the Romantic Road, and the days you only do once.
The twentieth century
Germany keeps its twentieth century in plain sight.
Berlin and Munich both run half-day walks through the years between 1933 and 1989, and both have memorial sites within an hour of the centre. Sachsenhausen is north of Berlin, Dachau north-west of Munich. These visits are long and quiet, and they are not sightseeing.
The memorial sites at Sachsenhausen and Dachau are free to enter. What a tour covers is the guide and the travel out from the city.
A king’s fantasy, a medieval nightshift, and Hamburg’s loudest half-mile.
Castles and nightlife exist everywhere. A king who bankrupted himself building one, a watchman who still walks the hour with a halberd, and half a mile of neon that produced the Beatles do not.
Neuschwanstein
Ludwig II started it in 1869 and never saw it finished. He was dead by 1886 and the castle opened to paying visitors within weeks, which is roughly what his ministers had in mind. Only about fifteen rooms were ever completed. Entry is by timed guided slot, the summer slots go weeks ahead, and it is half an hour uphill from Hohenschwangau unless you take the bus or the horse cart.
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- 3Neuschwanstein Castle Tour from Munich★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 5,117 reviews
The Nachtwächter
Before street lighting, German towns paid a man to walk the lanes after dark, call the hour and check the fires were out. The job died with the gas lamp and came back as a tour: a guide in a cloak with a lantern and a halberd, an hour of it, usually setting off from the town hall. Dresden and Munich both run one, and so do a dozen smaller towns.
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- 31.5-Hour Public Tour with Night Watchman Bremme★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,116 reviews
The Reeperbahn
Half a mile of St Pauli that was a ropewalk before it was anything else, which is where the name comes from. The Beatles played the clubs here for two years before anyone in England had heard of them. Tours run in the evening and cover the music history, the rules on Herbertstrasse, and the small police station sitting in the middle of all of it.
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- 2Reeperbahn Lust & Laster Tour for Adults Only★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 5,440 reviews
- 3Insider Tour of the Reeperbahn & St. Pauli★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 5,057 reviews
Four things you cannot sort out on the day.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on registered slots, rehearsal schedules and a market season that lasts four weeks.
- 01Reichstag, Dome and Government District Guided TourThe dome runs on registered time slots and the list closes days ahead. Turning up is not a plan.
- 02Neuschwanstein & Linderhof Castle Full-Day TripCastle entry is by timed guided slot only. Summer slots go weeks out and there is no walk-in queue.
- 03Original Munich Christmas Market Tour with Festive Wine and FoodThe markets open in the last week of November and shut before Christmas Eve. Outside those four weeks there is nothing standing.
- 04Elbphilharmonie Plaza Guided TourThe Plaza runs on timed tickets and the evening slots go first. A guided slot gets you in and explains the building.
On Sunday the shops shut and the tours do not.
German shop-closing law keeps almost everything shut on a Sunday: supermarkets, department stores, the lot. Bakeries open for the morning, museums keep their normal hours, and the boats and walking tours run to timetable. Sunday is the day to have something booked.
By city, north to south
By kind of day: on foot, on the water, at a table
Berlin to Cologne by train, with a castle in the middle.
Füssen
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