7 Day Spain / Portugal
 

We'd like to travel from Barcelona down the coast to Valencia on to Malaga and then to Lisbon. We thought a train trip would be the most efficient and cost effective way. Any suggestions from seasoned travellers?

Your itinerary is completely daft. Spain is larger than every US state other than Texas and Alaska. The distances are not negligible. There is no super-fast train from Barcelona to Valencia (the trip is 3 hours) or Valencia to Malaga (close to 10 hours). You will spend the whole of your trip travelling and not doing anything other than watching the countryside go by, and this presupposes that there is direct train routes from Malaga to Lisbon.

You simply do not have the time to fit all of these places into one trip in seven days. Barcelona (and Valencia) are on opposite sides of the Iberian peninsula from Lisbon. Even if you had 14 days, this would be a bit rushed (and beg the question why you skipped Madrid and Seville in favor of Lisbon).

Reconsider.

As noted, 7 days is not a whole lot of time. If you want to spend a few days enjoying Barcelona and Lisbon, you can fly between the two for as low as €57 R/T on TAP, a little more on Vueling. The flight takes 2 hours.

Thanks for the info. We assumed that there would be high speed trains between cities. We will definitely reconsider.

You may wish to concentrate on the east coast, there are some wonderful places to visit such as Cadaques, Roses, Calella de Palafrugell and Llafranc as well as Valencia and surrounds.

I agree. 7 days is not much time to do so much. Maybe you could do Barcelona,Valencia ,Madrid or take 3 days more and fit in Sevilla.Depends on how much time you want to spend in each city.Two days in each city would be the minimum IMO. The fast speed train(AVE) from Valencia to Madrid is 90 minutes.
http://theartichokeadventures.blogspot.com.es/

Last year my daughter and I went to Spain for 12 days. I did not want to rent a car so we took the train. Over the course of the trip we spent 10 hours on trains, and it was perfect. This was our itinerary:

1- Arr MAD a.m., p.m. train to Cordoba (1 1/2 hrs)
2- Cordoba p.m. train to SEV (takes 45 min by train)
3- Sevilla
4- Sevilla
5- Seville
6- Sevilla to Granada (3hr train)
7- Granada
8- Granada to MAD (4hr train)
9- MAD
10- Day trip to Segovia (45 min train)
11- MAD
12- Depart

This board set me straight when in my excitement I wanted to do too much. The value of pacing yourself (and not spending your whole vacay in transit) cannot be overstated!

With such a big country and limited amount of time, I think you need to set some priorities. I had to decide to eliminate Portugal and Barc from our itinerary, and I was talked out of going to Malaga in favor of Granada. You can see the thread if you click on my id. I would recommmend checking the AVE train to get an idea of travel times and cities they service.