lery

After spending 6 days in Madrid, my family and I are planning to visit Andaluzia. We are not renting a car. Is it 2 days in each city enough? How do we go from one city to another? Can we do them without a guide?
If you have any suggestions (how many days, which cities, hotels), I will be very happy!!!! THANKS everybody!

pavfec

I suggest that you consult a guidebook, which will probably give you lots of information on travel, sites, etc.

We did rent a car for our Spain trip last year, so I'm not familiar with the transportation between these cities. We visited Granada and Seville. I found 2 days in Granada to be enough, but just a bit short in Seville. We didn't see everything in town. We never use a guide. We just arm ourselves with a good guidebook and a map and set off on our own. You can do these two cities easily by yourselves.

In Granada, we stayed at the Hotel Sacromonte. It was clean, spacious, reasonably priced and a 5-10 minute walk to the centre.

In Seville, we stayed at the Novotel. It's located beside the football/soccer stadium, so it's a bit further from the centre (15-20 minute walk), but you can also get to the centre by bus or taxi. We loved this hotel, and me especially its rooftop pool! I would recommend it. Their rates during the week are cheaper than on the weekend.

nessundorma

I think Cordoba is best done as a day trip from Sevilla. And I think Granada is best handled with a 2-night stay, to enable you to make a night visit to the Alhambra and well as touring the gardens in the morning, when it is cool.

So I would suggest taking the fast train to Sevilla and spending 3 nights there, using one day for a visit (by train) to Cordoba.

Then you can take a train, bus or fly to Granada, and spend 2 nights there.

It is often extremely inexpensive to fly between cities in Spain. Check out fares on Iberia or Vueling.

You don't need a guide anywhere you are going (a guidebook will do), but I highly recommend that you do a night tour as well as a day tour. It may sound extravagant or time consuming, but it is not. It is uniquely magical to experience the Alhambra at night, and there are far fewer tourists.

Enjoy your trip!

Viajero2

"Can we do them without a guide?"...a guide as in a personal tour guide or a guideBOOK? If personal guide tour is what you were referring to, yes, I think you can certainly sightsee, enjoy and learn without one. That said, a personal guide tour can be a very, very, very worthy investment (hourly rates is the best alternative).

When are you going? Personally, I would spend 4-5 days in Madrid (to include day trips to Toledo, Segovia, Avila). Then ,train to Seville and stay 3 days, to include a day trip to Cordova. I would then head out to Granada for a couple of days. Granada is a lot more than The Alhambra as any good guidebook will point out for you.

In Seville stay at Hosteria del Laurel.

lery

Sorry, I forgot to say we are travelling in January(we all love winter time, we live in Brasil, we have hot weather almost all year long!!).
So it will be something as:
-5 days in Madrid,
-train to Seville: 3 days (day trip to Cordoba)
-Granada: 4 days (day trip to Alhambra,perhaps stay till night to take the night tour.
-Barcelona :5 days.
Any comments will be wellcome. Any suggestion on hotels will be VERY apprecaited!!!
THANKS everybody again!!!

Viajero2

What your cost range for hotels? Did you check on hosteriadellaurel.com

julies

A different suggestion. Take the high speed train from Madrid to Cordoba. Spend the rest of the day & overnight it. Get up in the morning & take the train to Seville. Spend 3 full days there. Personally we had only one very long day in Granada (we were staying 45 minutes away). We arrived around 10:00 and left close to midnight after doing the night tour of the Alhambra. This was enough of Granada for us. 4 days seems way too many. Also, frankly, we weren't particularly impressed with the night tour even though we had read all the somments on this board about making sure to so it in addition to the regular daytime visit.