Hey guys, just looking for some advice about travelling in Spain for 10 days in July.

We land in Madrid at 9am and plan to catch a train straight to Zaragoza and spend the afternoon and night there. The next morning travelling by train to Barcelona for the day and night. The next day will be spent on a day trip to Montserrat and when back in Barcelona at the end of the day, going by train to Valencia for that night and the following day. After spending the day in Valencia, we were thinking about going back to Madrid for a night. Then we wanted to do Córdoba, Granada, Málaga, Ronda, Sevilla and back to Madrid through Toledo.

We are both in our mid-twenties and very active, and roughly know what we want to see in each city/town. The aforementioned is our ideal itinerary and we understand it effectively means one day and night in each city/town and we were wondering if that was really feasible? Or if we are stretching ourselves too thin? If so, are there any cities/towns that we should cut out of this trip?

Also, we have yet to purchase train passes because we were unsure if trains or buses were the better option for the locations we have planned? Or a combination of the two?

Finally, we are travelling to Portugal and Morocco as well, and the entire trip is 35 days. What would be the best type of packing for this duration and busy itinerary? Backpacking or suitcase?

Many thanks !

Are you train conductors or do you plan on seeing Spain?

Not feasible. maybe not even doable.

Oh, my.... You have no idea of the insults and bad comments that are about to come your way from the Fodorites that don't have a "mean streak". See the Lounge forum for more info on that.

To be honest, you are trying to put way too much into 10 days in Spain. Lay it out on a calendar and include travel time between locations to see how much time you have in each location. In 10 days, I would do only about 3 locations.

It sounds like you have a list of Spanish towns and Cities and just want to tick them off as you step off the train and then step back on. Your "itinerary" spells out 13 stops in 10 days, clearly not doable.

Get out a map of Spain, look at where your stops are and you'll see that you can't do what you propose. Select a maximum of 3 stops of which Madrid and Barcelona (including Montserrat) appear to be musts and one other. Madrid and Barcelona alone are worth the 10 days.

10 days is simply not enough time to see all the places you list. I would cut out Zaragoza and Barcelona and concentrate on Andalucia. Yes, it will be hot (as will be the rest of Spain), but you are young and can handle it.

A good trick is to set out your days like a timetable, working out how long it'll take you to travel between places, and listing what you want to see in each city. e.g.:

Day 1. Arrive Madrid at 9am, catch train to Zaragoza arrive 12 noon, check in/lunch 1 hour, afternoon and evening seeing.......

Day 2. Train to Barcelona arriving ....... Afternoon and evening seeing......

Day 3. Day trip to Monserrat.

Day 4. train to Valencia. arrive..... want to see.........

etc. etc.

if you want to go to Andalucia after Valencia [to which I would give more than one night as I would to Barcelona] why not fly to Seville or wherever? going back to Madrid will just eat up time, which you have little enough as as it is.

it's a truism, [because it's true!] but you generally "lose" half a day every time you move. So if you are intent on moving every day, that's approx ⅓ of your holiday gone on sitting in trains and planes. If you're spending all that money to get somewhere, wouldn't you prefer to see it rather than travel round it?

Remember, you can't see everything. Once you accept that you can start to decide what you really, really want to see.