Nancy G. Hallas wrote: > Could you help me with a translation, please? I do not want to make a > big mistake. > I was reading about a hotel, Romantik Hotel Gravenberg, in Langenfeld, > Westfalen. They described a "Vitalgarten." What is this? I dont't know that word. Any advertising slogan for a boring garden. > Also they mention a "textilfreie zone." What does this mean? It sounds like > clothes-free to me. Yes. They seem to have a sauna and you are allowed to jump around naked there. I think it is a concrete hotel outside the town. > http://www.gravenberg.de/ > > I am looking for places (not too expensive) to stay with my husband and > grown son(21 years) in Germany in August along the Rhine and ending up > in Frankfurt. I started out near Koeln looking at hotels. Do you know > if this is near there? Nancy, I don't know much about hotels. I never sleep in a hotel, I prefer camping holidays. I would not start the planning of a Germany trip with the hotel. After my opinion you foremost should plan the route and the cities. Many German towns - especially in the north - were destroyed in the war and thereafter been rebuild modern and ugly. Other ones still are old and beautiful. Don't waste your time on the wrong places. Firstly buy a traveller's guide and look for beautiful places along the road. Then choose traditional and unpretending hotels in the center of little romantic timberwork towns. Perhaps they have no sauna nor a "Vitalgarten" but you will have more joy in Germany. A beautiful country to start your Rhineland tour is the region of the Mosel river. Fly to Luxemburg and from there along the Mosel to Koblenz, and then up and down the Rhine. * Dieter