My friends and I are planning a trip to Spain in July. We'd like to spend 5 days in and around Barcelona, and 3-4 days in and around Madrid. Our travel agent is having a hard time getting us discounted airfare when the Barcelona to Madrid air is included. Any ideas on a quick and cheap way to get from Barcelona to Madrid? Also any ideas of "must sees" in these two cities? And which cities are easy and quick to get to from them?

I bought tickets over the internet on Spanair for May for the BCN - MAD trip and it was about $50 per person. Just check out the Spanair site and book it yourself. They don't use e tickets, but you'll be able to have the paper tickets delivered in about 10 days. I think they can do it faster if you need them to.

Can I also book through expedia?

I'm not sure, but I tend to doubt it. Most of the small European discounters just work through their own websites as far as I know. The site is spanair.com.

Beth - you can't use Expedia. You should check www.iberia.com in addition to www.spainair.com. I booked a flight from Granada to Barcelona directly on Iberia for $35.

I hit most of the "must sees" on my trip last month. If you click on my screen name and look for a thread called "Spain Trip Report - Kaudrey Returns" you'll see what I did on my trip (Madrid is in the beginning, Barcelona at the end).

Have a great time.

Karen

Thanks for the advice. I just checked expedia and was able to find tickets on spanair for under $50.

Any ideas for days trips from Barcelona and Madrid?

This "trick" worked for us. We wanted to fly open jaw, so we studied the flight schedules for the airlines that flew into Barcelona, Sevilla and Madrid.

We discovered Delta flies from JFK to Barcelona with a stop-over in Madrid. We booked the flight to Barcelona and then returned home from Madrid two weeks later. It was the exact same price as if we had flown roundtrip OKC to Barcelona. They had a fare sale and we got a terrific price on an open jaw ticket!

- Sharon