MoBro

elbegewa

@Mobro: I emailed the Seville apartments you recommended and they indeed do have some 1 bedrooms at a mid-range prices, so we are considering it. Looking at Google Earth and Google maps its location looks fairly convenient for walking (which we'll probably mostly do) and the neighborhood looks appealing. What about when one needs to take transit? It looks like its a bit of a trek to any transit stops. Without a "hotel desk", and not speaking Spanish, how easy would it be to get a taxi when leaving? Also, in the bicycle circles I hear a lot good about cycling in Seville, but being an old and conservative cyclist (and my DW putting up with it and a bit timid about it), from Earth View it really doesn't look too accommodating for biking. What were your impressions? And finally, did the air conditioning work well? DW gets very hot and that's her biggest concern.

All:
Do you have any recommendations for Barcelona? There's so much to choose from, it's intimidating. Without really knowing we're concentrating on Eixample (or possibly El born), trying to stray not too far Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes.

We're new to the concept of hostals (not hostels) and are somewhat intrigued about them.

scdreamer

We returned to California yesterday from a five-week road and train trip through Andalucia (Sevilla, Granada, Ronda, Malaga) and on to Ubeda, Alarcon, Valencia and Barcelona. We are just slightly younger than you are - and we travel quite a bit, usually on month-long adventures. We like to stay in apartments when we are going to be in a place for three nights or longer. We've had great luck with airbnb - almost every apartment we have rented over the years has afforded us the opportunity to be in a neighborhood - even if it is in the middle of a touristic destination. Apartments are generally less expensive than the kinds of hotels you are looking at - and you will have a kitchen in which to make your morning coffee, and to store any goodies you might find in the local markets. We also appreciate the additional space to spread out - sometimes after being joined at the hip all day, it's nice to be able to be in a larger amount of room, rather than in a small hotel room. With airbnb, we always meet the owners of the apartments when we arrive, and it is common for them to have some great pointers about the neighborhood - we've been given info about local shops and restaurants we would never have found on our own, and tips for getting around town.

In Barcelona we stayed in a two-bdrm apartment in Eixample (about $110 a night) about six minutes walk from the Sagrada Familia metro stop. The Barcelona metro is incredibly easy to use, and goes everywhere. I would recommend that no matter where you stay to buy a multiple day pass. So much to see in Barcelona!

MoBro

elbegewa, good questions! I'll try to answer them, based on our single experience in Seville.

We did not use public transit while in Seville, except for a cab or two. We walked everywhere.

It's about a 15 minute cab ride from the Seville apartment to the train depot. We used the same company to lease the Seville apartment, and one in Madrid. The leasing company arranged for cabs to pick us up at each apartment, when we were going to the train depot in Seville and the airport in Madrid.

I'd been a bit concerned, as I like to be early for planes & trains. But each cab arrived exactly on time, at each apartment. Because, you're right, the locations were not regularly frequented by cabs, unless you've called one.

You might contact the leasing company, and see if they still provide a local contact and help with cabs like that.

I hate hot weather, also, but we were there in October, so it was not a factor. The heating/AC in our apartments were modern, and worked well. I don't really recall if we used it much, though. The Seville apartment had nice, large windows which opened into the private courtyard and had security screens. We prefer open air, so had them open when we were in the apartment during the day. We were very comfortable.

I'll try to attach pictures of the Seville apartment building. It was clean as a whistle and very charming. If you walk out the front door, go to the left, you'll come across a quiet, cute area with little restaurants/bars within a few blocks. Walking to the right takes you to another square, with more people, and more shops/restaurants.



Rooftop patio


Our room was on the right side, facing this private courtyard


Chandelier in our room, just for fun


Front door into the courtyard


Tile stairs from courtyard to rooftop patio (there's also an elevator)


Walking from the street entrance, to the courtyard


Inner courtyard

MoBro

Regarding bikes, I'm not the best resource, but I'll post pictures of the narrow passages throughout Seville. I'd think bike riding might be possible, but challenging. You'd need to find the wider thoroughfares, I guess.











This is a block or so from the apartment


Notice the bikes

elbegewa

The more DW and I plan this trip the more excited we're getting.
THANK YOU ALL for your help and ideas. And a special thanks to MoBro for his suggestion and info about Sevilla - I've emailed the rental agency to reserve an apartment there. It's 2/3 of the way along the month-long trip, just the ideal place to have a full apartment for 4 nights, with laundry equipment, and by then we'll probably be hungry for some of our own cooking, at least, for breakfast. It looks like a place we'd never find on our own.

Now we're going to owe you some lengthy trip reports.

MoBro

Cool-- I think you will love Seville. We did! I wish we were returning to that lovely apartment.

Two restaurants walking distance from the apartment that we liked:
El Pinton (pictured above) home ? EL PINTON
San Marco Restaurante San Marco

There was a contemporary Italian restaurant we liked, just a couple of blocks from the apartment, if you turn left as you exit the building. I can't remember it's name, though. It was a lucky find.

Fodorite Maitaitom has photo essays about Spain that might be fun for you (I may have originally found that apartment through his recommendation)
https://travelswithmaitaitom.com/cha...on-to-sevilla/

If you're interested in flamenco, we enjoyed a show at the Flamenco Museum:
https://museodelbaileflamenco.com/en/
It's a tiny place, and you need tickets in advance. You can enjoy drinks & snacks during the show.

Have fun planning your fantastic trip!

elbegewa

MoBro: That photo essay/trip report by Maitaitom that you referenced is one of the best trip reports I've read, flocking sheep and all. I can now blame you when I spend so much time reading the rest of its chapters. And thanks for the restaurant reco's. Not being foodies we usually just stop in at most any random place when we're hungry ... sometimes happily, sometimes unhappily. Now we have a few places nearby that we can happily get to know.

MoBro

Yes, maitaitom is a treasure! You can see how many reports he has, from that link.

We aren't foodies, either, by a long shot. We eat when and where we're hungry, and choose a place by its menu and style. We never plan our days around a dinner reservation. Our daughter had eaten at El Pinton and recommended it.

kja

I've been traveling, and so am only now seeing these posts. While I appreciate AlessandraZoe's compliment, I am NOT an expert! danon and Nelson are correct -- any recommendations I offered about flamenco were based on comments from kimhe, whose passionate expertise about flamenco is, IMO, missed here on Fodor's.

I'm sure your trip will be awesome, elbegewa!

Binge_travelling

Hey, I've been to Barcelona a couple of times now and it's absolutely gorgeous you live the food, markets and history. Be careful of Pick Pockets though. I was a victim of this so be careful with your belongings. We recently just travelled to Puerto Banus. Lovely Villas, ports, restaurants. It's a great place to consider. It's about a 40 minute drive from Malaga.

elbegewa

The more we're reading about Spain the more we're getting stoked about our trip this coming fall - in part thanks to all of you.

To be honest, we had never really considered Spain before, but after debating what to do for my 75th birthday, somehow it made it to the top of the list. And the more we learn, the better it seems.

We've booked all our flights and hotels, some of the visits to various sights, and importantly, various bike tours. Now we're waiting for the very roughly 60 day window on Renfre to book our trains. I even bought a small tablet to carry along. Maybe (hopefully ... just maybe) I'll find time to send various trip reports and/or entries to my blog (Lee's Random Ramblings) periodically as the trip progresses, instead of trying to write them from memory months after the trip (I'm a world-class procrastinator at that). But you all deserve to find out the results of your various (excellent) suggestions

kja

Spain is a delight, elbegewa, and it has an incredible range of different regions -- different foods, different traditions, different architecture, different languages (despite the common use of Spanish), etc. And it's HUGE, so many opportunities for enjoyable trips.

elbegewa

Drats!!! We usually don’t plan out itineraries within cities we visit, keeping it flexible depending on the weather and our whims

But … in Barcelona so many of the sites require timed entry tickets that are best bought in advance .... and there are so many things we'd like to do and see. So we’re trying to figure out an itinerary for our 4 full days (5 nights) there in mid September. I’ve started a separate thread at Seeking Suggestions for Barcelona

elbegewa

We did it!
In September & October 2019 we spent 30 days in Spain. The trip turned out to be one of the best we’ve taken.

Now, in these dire pandemic times both in Spain, at home in Seattle, and around the world it’s time to post a trip report to (1) help take our minds off of the coronavirus, (2) recall better times, (3) to encourage others to experience Spain when better times eventually return, and (4) most importantly, to thank all of the hosts and people we met in Spain – we hope that you survive the pandemic and can eventually get your lives and businesses back in order. It is heartbreaking. It’s going to be hard … very hard. Hopefully blogs like this may help a tiny bit as we all struggle to look to the future and to reach a new normal together.

And thank all of you on Fodor's who were tremendously helpful (as always) in planning the trip.

I'm working on a series of trip reports about various segments of the trip. The first of them, the overview, is on my blog at https://leebruch.blogspot.com/2020/0...-overview.html

mikelg

Thanks so much for your thoughtful words. Tourism in Spain and Italy will take long to recover. As we say in Spain, "fear is free", so many will choose to travel domestic or even not to travel and save the money and time for better times. Who knows, they may discover a vaccine, a cure or it may disappear spontaneously, but for many of us, it´s a completely lost year. As you say, we do hope to get our lives and business back in order by the time visitors decide to come back again. Many things will change, at least for some time: we are very social, we love staying in the streets, we are very much family oriented, bars are our churches and they are our places to socialize, to talk, to enjoy our family life, we love to touch and to kiss each other for whatever reason...In Spain (I´m Basque) we are supposed to get out of our confinement on April 26, little by little, as informations about the pandemic are improving every day...but have to be on the watch and governments can´t afford a new one if we don´t take our de-confinement (this word exists?? )seriously. Thanks again.

annhig

Thank you too for your thoughtful words, mikelg. It will be interesting to see how Spain and indeed Italy manage their emergence from lockdown, which is likely to be earlier than the UK or the US. Hopefully we can learn lessons from your example, though so far we seem to have been reluctant or perhaps incapable of doing so. In the meantime i hope that you and yours stay safe and well.

joannyc

Sorry to say that I don't think any travel will be on the horizon for us this year.

jc_uk

We're due to visit Mallorca in August and Barcelona in September however the news today states that the UK will continue to be in some form of lockdown until a vaccine in available which is predicted to be September at the very earliest. If that is the case then I can't see much travel occurring anytime this year.

mikelg

Most likely, Spain will be fine by the beginning of summer, but other countries are in different scenarios and pace and international travel will be very restricted. The tourism industry in Spain (16% of GDP, 6% in the Basque Country) is not considering any scenarios involving the arrival of international visitors, much less overseas visitors. If, by any chance, these predictions are not correct, you´ll find real bargains if you are able to come!!