Help with Barcelona, San Sebastian, Madrid Itinerary
 

My husband and I are planning a trip to Spain in September, and I’m hoping some of you will be able to help me plan out my itinerary. We’re not terribly concerned with spending time looking at art, museums, churches, etc. - this trip is strictly about relaxing, people watching, maybe going for a walk or two on the beach, and most importantly, eating.

The basic plan right now is to fly into Barcelona, spend 2 days there, spend 3-4 days in San Sebastian and the surrounding areas, and then spend 1-2 days in Madrid before we fly home. Surprisingly, it’s no more expensive to do this open jaw than it would be to fly round trip in/out of the same airport.

Question 1: We’ll be arriving on a Sunday morning and flying back the following Sunday morning. The rates are the same if we fly into BCN and out of MAD or vice-versa, and I know quite a few shops are likely to be closed on Sunday. So of Barcelona or Madrid, where would we find more to do that first day?

Question 2: Since our arrival time of 9:15am the first day will really be 3:15am for us, and we’ll be zonked from an 8 hour flight, what’s the best way to spend the first part of that day? It seems silly to book a hotel for Sat night when we won’t be checking in until after 10am on Sun… should I just request an early check-in on Sun and tough it out until then? (If we’re in Barcelona, we’ll probably stay at the Granados 83 Hotel. I haven’t researched hotels in Madrid yet.)

Question 3: We were thinking of taking an overnight train either to or from San Sebastian at the beginning/end of the trip. Is there somewhere online that I can book this, or an English-speaking travel agency I can call to do it for me?

Question 4: I currently have us booked at the Hotel Niza in SS for Mon, Tues, and Wed nights, and then the Hotel Obispo in Hondarribia on Thurs night, since the film festival moves into SS that day. What are other day trips in the SS area that we might like during that time, given the way I indicated we’d like to spend our time? (I get the sense that Bilbao may be wasted on us since we’re not interested in seeing the Guggenheim.)

Question 5: I’ll be about 14 weeks pregnant during this trip, so no indulging in Spanish wine for me. =-( What types of things will I be able to request to drink at most of the bars and restaurants other than constant water? (I don’t know what the culture is like there, and if I’ll constantly be needing to explain why I’m not drinking since i may not be showing all that much yet.)

Many thanks in advance!

Dear papayagirl:

With only a week, I would skip Madrid. You may also want to only pick one area to visit: Stay around Barcelona & Catalunya or fly to Bilbao and concentrate on SS and the Basque country. With your current plan, you will be too busy & tired to enjoy yourselves.

Click on my name to pull up our trip report from Spain in June.

Good luck,

MY

Would you consider spending more time in Barcelona if you just like to wander around and people watch? This is an incredibly beautiful and vibrant city and 4 days wasn't enough for us -- we couldn't believe it, we thought we'd feel "done" with BCN and we were *so* wrong. BCN is also a great coastal city so you can enjoy the water/beach thing here too. San Sebastian was beautiful and so was Hondarribia but these are very small towns and I couldn't imagine spending twice as much time there as Barcelona -- would you consider leaving out Madrid?

Have you looked at Maribel's Guides -- she's great, also do a Spain search for replies from laclaire who I'd consider a BCN guide and Robert who specializes in the Navarra region and has just amazing culinary taste -- don't miss Asador Epeleta which Robert steered us to -- along the A15(?) on the way to Pamplona from San Sebastian. The most amazing chuleta, I mean mere words and images cannot bring that experience into representation.

The food in BCN was amazing, dinner at Passadis Del Pep, the Boqueria for breakast and lunch, Sauc for a great prix fixe 3 course lunch. I want to try Abac and Commerc 24 next time. If food is your thing, I can see why you're drawn to SS with all those Michelin stars but I must say that BCN enables you to experience the most amazing food in all price ranges due to the availability of sublime, fresh ingredients. We rented an apartment in BCN solely so that we could easily purchase more food items and eat them at our leisure since we snack throughout the day and late into the evening. We'd start each morning with a wander through the Boqueria and splurge on the best olives, cheeses, cured ham, anchovies, unfamiliar produce that we could find... It was divine and food was also our top priority for us on this trip.

I had a reservation for lunch at Akelare in SS but we had stormy weather that day and I was terribly jet-lagged so I ended up cancelling. I envy your future travels to Spain, absolutely one of the best vacations I've ever had. (thanks to the help of people on this board -- ekscrunchy, laclaire, Robert, Maribel and others...)

I can only offer you my experiences on traveling while 14 weeks pregnant. It was my second child, so I was showing, and sometimes I "tried" to make it show more than others - like when we requested an upgrade to business class (our original flight, where we already had upgrades, was cancelled, long story). It worked!

In restaurants, as I recall, I would often say that I was pregnant, and the staff would smile, and never bring up wine again.

Thanks everyone for your replies so far. Figuring out how long to spend in each region is turning out to be the trickiest part, and i was trying to take a lesson from our trip to Germany a couple of years ago. We spent a day or two at most in most of the places we visited then, and the one area where i'd booked us for 3 days (Munich) seemed like way too much. But i can easily plan to spend at least one more day in Barcelona and one less in SS for starters.

I should also clarify that when i say we want to spend time eating, we don't plan to go to too many of the Michelin-starred restaurants. We both work in NYC and rarely go to the more expensive restaurants here, so we figured we'd be just as happy wandering around the boqueria and trying out the local tapas and pintxos in Spain.

And lexma - this will be my second child as well. Maybe i should plan my airplane attire more strategically! ;-)

If you're doing more budget dining, I'd say that's even more rationale for making this a BCN-heavy trip.

Tapas in SS and Hondarribia were very good, but make sure you order hot tapas and not just the mostly cold stuff off the bar (which in my opinion were getting a little redundant -- like the little jamon sandwiches that were rather dry and that I made much better versions of once I was in an apt with good groceries... ) The ordering of these made-to-order hot tapas are difficult if you don't know Spanish (like us) -- but this is where you can get a big hunk of foie gras on poached artichoke for like 5 bucks. Ordering these in some of the more "touristy" tapas bars on the main Plaza Castillo in Pamplona was easy because menus came translated -- but because of this we enjoyed better tapas in Pamplona than in the SS area. If you can read Spanish menus, you're home free! One of the tapas bars in SS (or was it Hondarribia?) offered a 10-12 course tapas menu made-to-order that looked delicious and the price was totally reasonable. We tried to do this but the place was closed when we checked it out... It's one of the places highlighted by Maribel.