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This summer me and my family will visit france and germany.
The problem is that we dont really know what we should see.
Or if there are any good places to stay at, which isn't too expensive etc.

I would like to hear if anyone here who lives around that area have some suggestions, or if you have visited france, germany, poland, switzerland etc recently.

We will probably see Berlin, Paris and Normandie, but we have two weeks and want to see as much as possible

i've been back from europe for about 2 weeks now after "doing as much as we can" in 28 days (our first time there) and have a few things to offer:

Germany
the Rhine Cruise was probably the highlight of germany, for me. staying in Cologne, we took a train to Bingen (a short walk** from the train station to the dock), catching the 11:30 boat to St. Goar (this is the downstream direction, allowing you to see more in less time. thus the train ride). arriving there ~1pm, we had ~3 hrs to spend eating (lots of restaurants and cafes to choose from, each with representatives, inviting you to read their english menu and sit at their sidewalk dining area for lunch), shop/window shop, stretch your legs, etc, before the next boat arrives and takes you to Koblenz (the train station there is a long walk from the dock). the first leg of the trip was fraught with castles (seemed like every other hill had one) and quaint riverside towns below, while the second leg of the cruise offered very little (more towns but very few castles) and should be skipped, in my opinion.

we took KD Lines because cruises with them are free if you have Eurail passes, which i highly recommend. the trains are the "only way to fly" (literally true for us because the volcano caused our flight to rome to be cancelled. expecting this, we boooked a great train ride from munich to rome 2-3 days before-hand).

the KD pdf literature/brochure can be found here for scheduling purposes.

if i do the cruise again some day, as stated, i'd skip anything north of St. Goar and, instead, use the extra time to get off the boat and make my way up to one of the castles for a closer look. at the least, i'd visit the one in St. Goar, then catch the train "home" from there.

btw, Cologne was decent but the only thing we knew to do was visit the Cathedral there which is conveniently just up the stairs from Dom HBF (big tip is to learn the train terminology and routes, public transportation systems, etc, for all cities you'll visit well in advance of your trip to make things go a lot smoother/more efficient) and a couple museums/shops around it.

also in germany, we visited Regensburg which was "not what it appeared to be in the brochures" and not worth the time, in my opinion. Rothenburg would have been a better choice for what i was looking for in Regensburg.

btw, we stayed in cologne because of the cathedral and because it was a sensible spot to end the train trip from copenhagen, denmark (i'm part danish, so...). point is, if you make the rhine part of your trip, it might make sense to get a hotel in frankfurt or mainz, return there after the boat, then maybe take a train to cologne for the day before moving on to the next city.

on to Paris:
Champs-Élysées is a must. i recommend starting the day at the Eiffel Tower, take the elevator trip as high as you can go (the top was closed when i was there), have a quick lunch at one of the stands along the seine, catch the Metro to the Champs-Élysées Clemencau stop and walk your way toward the Louvre.

btw, if you're arriving in Paris by train (we took the Eurostar from London)
Gare du Nord was a (unexpected) cesspool of gypsies and drunks. fore-warned is fore-armed.

and, one last note on paris... the facts that london is hosting the 2012 olympics and that paris is only 2-3 hours away means they're expecting plenty of tourists during that time so a lot of the sights in paris are being spruced up/prepared to be shown off and may be under reconstruction, have huge scaffolds covering parts of the monuments, (ie, one whole side of the Arc de Triomphe was covered by scaffolds and canvas tarps when i was there. same at notre dame where one side of the cathedral was covered), etc.. not the biggest deal but don't expect postcard-esque photos everywhere.


some quick advice, in general:

** = "short walks", to europeans, are marathons to us americans. ie, a good pair of walking shoes will be your best friend! a light-weight, hooded jacket is also highly recommended. chicago has nothing on the winds we found waiting in line beneath the eiffel tower

bring plenty of batteries (rechargables are best) as batteries were very expensive all over europe. and, don't forget a power converter/adapter.

lots of metro systems offer group day-passes. ie, in cologne, if i remember correctly, it was ~11 euro/day for 2-5 person passes, and well worth it. other places where no "group passes" are available, look for off-peak day tickets (after, say, 9:30am... this might have only been in london, but worth mentioning).

that's all i have time for right now. hope this helps.

Thanks for your great review of Europ, it really helps!
I dont think we can see all of those places, but at least some of them.

Thanks again!