funster

I will be based out of Marbella for 12 days in January and would like suggestions for an itinerary. I may have access to a car for a week.

cailin

if you have access to a car you should travel up through Ronda, and on to some of the lovely pueblos blancos like Grazalema, Zahara de la Sierra and Arcos de la Frontera (although that might be a bit much to fit into a day trip from Marbella, you could easily do it if you stayed overnight in one of the villages).

You could also do a day trip to Antequerra and go to the Lagoon of Fuente de Piedra. We were there in August and there was very little water and very few flamingos left, but I would imagine it's fantastic in winter.

Without a car you could do a day trip by train or bus to Granada to see the Alhambra. It would be a long day (I think it takes about 3 hours to get to Granada from Marbella), but you could always stay overnight if you didn't want to spent 6 hours travelling in the one day.

funster

Thanks for the tips, cailin. Would you also recommend a trip to Gibralter? Or would I be better off popping over to Portugal or Morocco?

cailin

Gibraltar isn't really that great IMO - it's quite a strange place - like a bit of England in the sun (except I guess it mightn't be that sunny in January when you are there). There's not really much more than a couple of hours worth of things to do in Gibraltar - you can go and see the apes and that's probably the height of it.

I'd avoid Morocco too - all you would get to see in a day trip is Tangier and it's not really worth it. I did a search on this forum and found the perfect quote to sum it up: "Don't bother, no matter how short the trip is. Unless you have the time to spend a few days in Marrakech or Fez or Agadir or one of the southern cities, don't cut short your European visit to go to Tangiers. It's disgusting and definitely not worth the time. Besides, it will turn you off visiting Morocco, which is a fascinating country which should be visited in its own right, but not by means of a boat trip to yucky Tangiers."

I've never visited Portugal from Spain, so can't comment on that as a suggestion.

AP6380

I've done a bit of research for a possible Spain trip and also wanted to do a daytrip to Morocco. I read many negative posts about Tangiers, but also several positive ones by people who hired a travel guide. I believe the one people recommended was named Aziz, and he is recommended in Rick Steves Spain Guide as well.

I think if you type Aziz into the search box you may be able to pull up the info. I think the trip may be worthwhile if you are really interested in getting a small taste of a completely different culture for a day, but hire the private guide. His rates seem very reasonable.

AP6380

Here's a positive post about Tangiers and Aziz:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34525256