8 Day Itinerary
 

In late March my husband and I are going to visit our daughter in Madrid, where she is living with a family as an au pair. We only have 8 days, and after poring over websites and books, this is the itinerary we have come up with:

3 nights Madrid
2 nights Granada
3 nights Seville
1 night Segovia or Madrid

We like history, art, and beautiful countryside (and interesting people, of course!).

Would it be reasonable to spend the night in Segovia if our plane leaves from Madrid at 12:35 PM the next day? Coming from Seville the day before, I'm not sure how much time we'll have there. Maybe it would be a better day trip from Madrid earlier in the trip?

Our other question is whether we should rent a car or take trains. We like the freedom of a car, and we have driven in Europe before, but we don't speak much Spanish (I'm working on it!), and we know parking can be a hassle. It looks like trains go where we want to go, but would it be easier to have a car?

I haven't made hotel reservations yet, so I would appreciate any suggestions for hotels. We don't need fancy, but we love charming, and prefer places that feel Spanish rather than American. We don't usually pay for luxurious, but we're willing to pay more for something special.

Thanks so much for any help you can give. We're excited to go!

If you're going to use public transportation instead of driving, I would do:

Madrid 4 days (w/day trip to segovia)
Granada 2 days
Seville 3 days
then take a late train back to Madrid for your flight home the next day

The reason being you'd need to get back to Madrid before you can take the train to Segovia (and they're differen train stations from madrid).

See if you can fly from Madrid to Granada.

Or, you can do:
Fly into Madrid, and immediately fly straignt to Granada, 2 nights
Seville 3 nights
Madrid 4 nights with day trip to Segovia.

If your 12:35 flight from Barajas is back to the U.S., you should be in the Check-in line by 09:30. I like yk's latter suggested itinerary; or possibly one that begins in Sevilla (i.e., Madrid-Sevilla; Sevilla-Granada; Granada-Madrid). From Madrid you could daytrip to Segovia or Toledo ... You will want to spend as much time as possible with your daughter, so your time in Madrid or your availability for daytrips might be 'tight.'

A rental car would be nice, but you don't really need one in Sevilla or Madrid. I would avoid the hassle of returning it when you're in a hurry to check-in for your flight home.

I think that either of yk's suggested itineraries are good. We LOVED Segovia and stayed two nights there. It's were our daughter studied fall semester. It is definitely worth at least a day trip. But trying to get from Segovia to the Madrid airport for a 12:35 flight would be really tight and very stressful IMHO.

Thank you for your suggestions. We need to do Madrid on the front end of our trip because my daughter will be traveling with a friend for the other weekend. I love the looks of Segovia and I'm hoping to squeeze it in.

AJMelheim, I copied your itinerary from other posts. Did you end up renting a car? Any great hotels you would recommend?

Too bad you can't take YK's suggestions re Granada first ( I do understand it's worked around your daughter's schedule) but that would make more sense.

I have done the drive from Segovia, (Pedraza actually ) to catch a morning flight and it was fine. </> But </B> I would not think to take it at the end like that given your pace/schedule.
As beautiful as Granada is I might eliminate that instead.
Add a day in Madrid. You can take the Train to Sevilla & add Cordoba. Back to Madrid after your DD goes her way then you can explore Segovia & surrounding area by car. You do not have that many days IMO for Granada it is not on the way.


In Segovia we enjoyed Hotel Infanta Isabel mainly for location but it was a decent value too the room was nice. It was good to be able to pop in if we needed something or wanted to drop off something in the room. In Pedraza we loved the Hospederia de Santo Domingo recommened by Maribel.
But this is a about 1/2 hour more from Segovia.

http://www.hospederiadesantodomingo.com/

As it turned out, we did NOT rent a car at all and I'm glad we made that decision. We planned to bus it between cities. The buses are cheaper than the trains and we figured the time on the buses would be relaxing and allow us to catch up on sleeping, reading or conversation.

The bus from Madrid to Granada was just over 5 hours. We arrived at the bus station in Madrid (Estacion Sur de Autobuses near Metro station Mendez Alvaro). Got tickets and were on the bus within an hour.

Bus from Granada to Seville is 3-4 hours, depending if you take directo or ruta. Again, we simply purchased tickets and were on the bus within an hour.

Seville to Madrid didn't go quite as I had planned. We arrived at the Seville bus station mid-morning. It was December 26 and apparently a LOT of people were traveling by bus that day and the next bus we could get on was 4 pm. So we took a city bus to the train station. My husband and daughter (speaks Spanish) stood in line to get the tickets. With tickets in hand they said, "Well, the good news is we get a meal on our train trip." I knew immediately that meant we were in First Class. This was NOT in our budget. So instead of 20 euro bus tickets we had 90 euro First Class train tickets. So we made the best of it and enjoyed the meal, the complimentary wine, the movie, the shorter transit time, the roomy seats, etc. Moral of the story is to check ahead if you plan to travel by bus on traditionally busy travel days.

I agree with you, mhutch196, about not doing Barcelona this time around. If we had tried to fit it in our trip, I think it would have felt WAY to rushed and like we were spending way too much time on buses or trains. Now our daughter talks about teaching in Spain for a year when she's done with college, so that might be our "excuse" for going back and including Barcelona in our itinerary.

Enjoy your trip!