Germany Itinerary 10 Days: The Berlin to Munich Route

Berlin spreads out, but the sights sit in two clusters: the historic center around Unter den Linden, and the riverfront where the Wall ran. Two days get you through both without a taxi.

Day 1: Land, Unpack, Walk

Treat the first day as a warm-up. Get to the hotel, then walk a stretch of Unter den Linden so that the map in your head starts to match the city, and leave the museums for tomorrow when you have a full day in front of you.

Dinner is the easy part. Kantstrasse is a long street of restaurants of every kind, and it works on a first night when nobody wants to research a booking.

Keep that first evening short. Tomorrow is the longest walking day of the Berlin stop, and it covers more ground than it sounds like it will.

Day 2: The Historic Center in One Loop

This is the day that carries the history, so start at eight and take the loop instead of the individual sights. A coach tour out of the center passes Museum Island, the Television Tower, the old cathedral wrecked in the Second World War, the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, with the city's parks filling the gaps between them.

Get off at two stops: the Holocaust Memorial and the Berlin Wall Museum. Both explain the 20th century in Berlin without much reading, and an hour in each is enough to change how the rest of the city looks.

The afternoon stays free. East Side Gallery, Tempelhofer Feld and Charlottenburg Palace are the easy calls, and Sachsenhausen, one of the largest Nazi concentration camps, is the harder half day if you want to spend it that way.

If you would rather have the commentary than the map, a Berlin tour covers the same ground with a guide attached.

Most routes between Berlin and Munich break the journey in Saxony, and Dresden is the stop a Germany tour usually builds in. The city sits in the Elbe Valley, which is why people call it the pearl of the valley and, without much exaggeration, the German Tuscany.

Day 3: South to Dresden

The drive takes under three hours, so an early start puts you in Dresden by late morning and keeps the whole afternoon for the old center. The road runs through Saxony, so the morning passes as scenery rather than highway.

Start at Dresden Castle, where the size of the building explains the collections before you see a single painting. Then walk the center, eat lunch, and keep the rest of the day loose, because the rebuilt streets are compact and the riverbank is where the city feels widest.

Sleep in Dresden instead of pushing on. Tomorrow morning is the reason to stop here at all.

Day 4: Saxon Switzerland, Then the Long Leg

The forest hills of Saxon Switzerland turn gold and red in autumn, and a half day out there breaks up the run south. Go early, come back for lunch, and keep the afternoon for the transfer that ends the day in Nuremberg.

The drive south is long enough that it does not share a day with a full Dresden morning, so pick one: a slow morning in town, or an early start on the road. Both work, but trying to have both is how this day goes wrong.

Nuremberg is the base for the night. The old town sits inside its walls, and the drive to Munich the next morning is short enough to leave the afternoon free.

Munich changes the tone of the trip. The streets are wider, the food is heavier, and the Alps sit close enough to be a plan rather than a hope.

Day 5: Arrive and Reset

After yesterday's long drive, schedule nothing. Check in, find dinner close to the center, and save the walking for tomorrow, when the city is fresh and your legs are too.

If you are not driving, this is also the moment to work out the next three days, because the day trips are the part that needs booking rather than deciding.

Stay in the center rather than out near the airport. You come back to that room every evening, and the walk to dinner matters more than a shorter taxi at the end of the trip.

Day 6: Marienplatz and the Residenz

Marienplatz is the square to start from, with the Old and New Town Halls facing each other across it and the red roof of the Frauenkirche a few minutes away. From there the Residenz is the interior worth paying for: room after room of it, and a collection that explains what Bavaria was long before it became a holiday region.

Spend the afternoon in a beer garden instead of another museum. That is the local order of things, and it also keeps you fresh for the castles tomorrow.

Navigation is easy once you can see the Frauenkirche's towers, because the center is compact enough to cross on foot.

If you want the center explained rather than walked, a Munich tour with a guide covers it in a morning and leaves your afternoon alone.

Day 7: Neuschwanstein and Linderhof

Both of King Ludwig II's castles stand in the same stretch of the Bavarian Alps, so one day takes them together. Neuschwanstein is the one on the posters, built high above a valley with the mountains behind it. Linderhof is smaller, stranger, and the one that surprises people, with an artificial grotto and a miniature lake on the grounds.

Book the castle entry before you go, because the day is long and the driving is the part you cannot shorten. Coach trips out of Munich do both in a day and put you back in the city by evening.

One warning from experience: pick the castle you actually want to go inside and see the other from outside. Two interior tours in one afternoon is a lot of stairs for the reward.

The last three days are the reason to end in Munich rather than doubling back north. Bavaria's mountains begin where the city's streets end, and the valleys below them are quiet in a way that no city on this route is.

Day 8: Move Into the Mountains

Change base and stay up there. The Zugspitze is the mountain to build the day around, and the villages below it give you somewhere to sleep that is not another city.

Winter turns these three days into a different trip, with snow on the higher ground and skiing in the Bavarian Alps as the reason to come at all. In summer the same roads are walking routes, and the lakes along them are cold and clear.

Put the mountain day on your first morning up there. Weather moves fast in the Alps, and an early attempt leaves you a second one if the summit closes in.

Day 9: Salzburg for the Day

Salzburg is a border crossing that does not feel like one. Mozart's city sits under its fortress, and the old town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is a set of Renaissance and Baroque streets you can walk in an afternoon.

Go in the morning, eat lunch in the old town, and come back over the border in the evening. Coaches from Munich already run this pattern, which tells you how well it holds up.

With a day less, Salzburg is the day to drop. The castles and the mountains are what you came for, and a second country is a bonus rather than the point.

Day 10: The Last Morning

Keep the final day empty. Breakfast, one last walk, and the airport. A morning transfer is a bad place to discover that your flight is earlier than you thought.

Two days decide how this trip feels, and both of them are transfer days. Neither one can be compressed, so plan them as travel and resist the urge to fit a stop in.

The Dresden Question

Dresden is the leg people cut first and the one that pays back when they keep it. It needs a night to work. As a lunch stop it is an hour of looking at a castle from a coach window, and you would have seen more of Saxony from the road.

The tight part is the second morning. Saxon Switzerland and a full Dresden morning compete for the same hours, and one of them has to give before the drive south.

Cutting It to Seven Days

A week still works. Keep Berlin, Munich and one day in the Alps and you have the three moods of the trip without the transfer in the middle. The base to cut is Dresden, because Berlin and Munich are the two the ten days are built around.

What you lose is the middle of the country: the Elbe Valley, the forest hills, and the sense of moving through Germany rather than flying over it. Some people do not miss it. That is a fair answer too.

If you would rather buy the week built, start with the Germany vacation packages rather than a single-city stay.

What Does Not Fit

Frankfurt is a different trip. It sits west of the line this route runs, and the Römerberg, the cider taverns in Sachsenhausen and the Goethe House need a day of their own rather than a detour.

With the days to spare, a Frankfurt tour covers the old square and the cider district without the timetable work.

Prague, Vienna and Budapest are their own trip, which is the arc the guided version follows. Bolting them onto ten days is how people end up seeing three cities through a coach window and remembering none of them.

The route comes down to one question: are you here for cities or for mountains? Everything else is detail.

If cities are the point, give Munich the extra night, because it is the base that feeds the day trips, and treat the Alps as the closing two days rather than a destination in their own right. If the mountains are the point, spend that night up in the valleys instead, where the weather decides your morning and a spare day is worth more than another city.

Either way, fix the two transfer days first and let the rest of the week fit around them, rather than filling the calendar and hoping the drives work out. That single decision reshapes everything after it, and it costs nothing to make before you book.