Susan56

I am planning a trip this coming March to Spain. I do all of the trip planning for my family, but I have come to rely on help from the people who visit this site. So here I am again. We usually travel with our teenage kids, but this time it is just my husband and me. We love travel, like to run around and see as much as possible, and both love history and learning about different people and places. With that said, here is the basic itinerary I have come up with, I have not yet booked any flights, so I am looking for assistance.

Fly NY to Madrid
Day 1 Madrid
Day 2 Madrid
Day 3 Day trip to El Escorial/Valley of the Fallen
Day 4 Train/Bus to Toledo and see Toledo and sleep there
Day 5 Train to Seville
Day 6 Seville
Day 7 early Train/Bus to Granada
Day 8 Granada
Day 9 Fly home from Granada (probably via Madrid)

Does this plan make sense? Give us enough time to see these places? I know we will not be anywhere for a nice long visit, but can we see major sites on this schedule? Any place you would cut out or add? We cannot add any more days to this trip.
Thanks in advance for the help, Susan

Kristina

Hi Susan-
I was just in Spain a couple of weeks ago and went to many of the places you are thinking going in 10 days. In fact, I'm in the middle of writing my trip report, just click on my name if you want to read it.
Your trip is fast paced, but probably will work. However, there are a couple of things you should check out.
1. Train to Seville from Toledo. There is no direct train. You will have to go back to Madrid to catch a train to Seville.
2.We took the morning bus from Seville to Granada. It was easy, 2.5 hours and we spent the afternoon visiting the Alhambra.
3.Check if there are connecting flights timed right out of Granada. We found when planning our trip that none of the departures in southern Spain would allow is to make our morning departure from Madrid. We wound up spending the last night of our trip in Madrid so we could make it to the airport on time.
Have a fantastic trip!

pittsburgh

I took the train from Seville to Granada a couple of weeks ago. I think there are 4 trains a day, including one at 7am. You can check on their website. Nice easy, quick way to travel. 3 hours for 19 euros.

NEDSIRELAND

Susan56 writes: <<...
Day 3 Day trip to El Escorial/Valley of the Fallen
Day 4 Train/Bus to Toledo and see Toledo and sleep there
Day 5 Train to Seville
Day 6 Seville ... >>

I would scratch the Valley of the Fallen (Franco's monument to himself) and visit Segovia, instead; unless you want to visit the San Lorenzo Monastery.

The new AVE between Madrid & Toledo is scheduled to begin service 15 Nov 2005. There are some additional new lines, one of which Toledo - Ciudad Real (first stop on the Madrid-Sevilla AVE line). So you may not have to come back to Madrid to catch AVE to Sevilla. You can go Toledo - Ciudad Real - Sevilla

Viajero2

I'm w/Ned on this one; consider visiting Avila/Segovia on a day trip rather than/in addition to El Escorial/Valley of the Fallen. This is a very popular excursion (Julia Tours, Pullmantour, they are very similar) from Madrid and worth taking as an organized tour that would save you time. The Aqueduct in Segovia and the Walled city of Avila are two incredibly spectacular sights.

Voyager2006

Reference the train from Sevile to Granada..as stated above it takes 3 hours (apparently a bit more than the bus but the train will probably afford you more sitting and certainly walking around space, although obviously a bit slower than the bus.

Be aware that when we took this same route earlier this year we arrived in the Seville station for the 7Am departure only to discover that that (those) train(trains) require seat reservations...which were easy to get.

We flew out of Granada to Barcelona and the Granada airport is an easy one to use...only three or four gates but I would definitely suggest taking a taxi to it from town. I am certain you'll have to connect through Madrid from there (depending on your final destination).

StephenG

NED,
"The new AVE between Madrid & Toledo is scheduled to begin service 15 Nov 2005. There are some additional new lines, one of which Toledo - Ciudad Real (first stop on the Madrid-Sevilla AVE line). So you may not have to come back to Madrid to catch AVE to Sevilla. You can go Toledo - Ciudad Real - Sevilla "

I hope your correct but Renfe sight doesn't give anything for this December 5 th, we are going from toledo to cordoba and have planned to bus to madrid and metro to train and train to cordoba. If the link to ciudad real is up by then it would be great.

cindyjo

ned - how did you hear of the ave opening in 2005? would like to follow up as we would like to go from cordoba to toledo in march 2006. would be great not to have to stop in madrid and then catch bus. thanks.

NEDSIRELAND

Here's a link
http://www.abc.es/abc/pg051103/prens...AC-MAD-196.asp
Sorry, it's all in Spanish

marigross

I only made to El Escorial/Valle de los caidos on my third trip to Madrid. While I am glad that I did (and can now scratch it from the list), I am very happy that I did not 'invest' time in my first two visits. I would not do it again. El Escorial is nice but the Valle is eerie and unpleasant.

If you are planning to do this by public transportation the Valle piece can be a bit tricky. There is only one bus going between el Valle and San Lorenzo.

Segovia / Avila is a much better choice in my opinion.

NEDSIRELAND

RENFE's press release to announce timetables and fares of the high speed rail link between Madrid and Toledo.

It will be opened on Nov 15th. Tickets will be sold from Nov 10th on. There will be 10 daily services on each way on weekdays, 8 on weekends:

MAD->TOL
6:50a Mon-Fri
7:50a Mon-Fri
9:20a
10:20a
12:20p
1:50p
3:50p
5:50p
7:50p
9:50p

TOL->MAD
6:50a Mon-Fri
8:00a Mon-Fri
9:20a
10:20a
12:20p
1:20p
3:20p
5:20p
7:20p
9:20p

The trip will take 35 minutes. The fares are:
8 euro one way
12.80 euro return trip on the same day
14.40 euro return trip on different day

pittsburgh

For Granda, make sure to buy your tickets ahead of time (on the Internet). Saves a lot of time spent waiting in line, plus then you can plan ahead for when your entrance times are. I did both the normal and the night viewing sessions a couple of weeks ago (click on my name to see the trip report) and thought they were both useful.

cindyjo

nedsireland, thanks for posting the information about ave to toledo. it is definitely a help to us.

StephenG

ditto!! Nedsireland. great new for us in December.

Susan56

Thank you all for your help. I am going to use airline miles for this trip and at this time I just wanted to know if the timing made sense. That way I can book the flights and then I can tinker around with the itinerary inbetween the flights.

NEDSIRELAND - thank you for the train information. I was hoping that we could take a train from Madrid to Toledo, stay overnight in Toldedo and then head to Sevilla without going back to Madrid. And it looks like we will be able to do that. I guess it is not so bad if we had to go back to Madrid for the night.

As for not seeing El Escorial and going to Segovia instead - well, my family and friends who have been to Spain were pushing El Escorial. But I will look into going to Segovia. I have always leaned on Fodors travel boards for help with trips and the people here have never steered me wrong!

We are very excited about this trip. I am going to book the airfare this weekend and then I can go back to concentrating on the itinerary. So I will be back, I am sure, with more questions. Thank you all again!

Susan

Susan56

Thank you all for your help, but it seems that we are now going to have to cut our trip short one day. In order to fit everything in (I just don't want to drop anything) I have come up with the following plan:

Fly NY to Madrid
Day 1 (Friday) arrive Madrid (early am) and take train to Toledo
Day 2 (Saturday) morning train back to Madrid
Day 3 (Sunday) Madrid/El Escorial
Day 4 (Monday) Train to Sevilla in afternoon
Day 5 (Tuesday) Sevilla
Day 6 (Wednesday) afternoon train/bus to Granada
Day 7 (Thursday) Granada
Day 8 fly home from Granada

I have already checked out the air portion of this trip and I found flights at good prices on Iberia. I know that this is rushed, but we are very aggressive travelers. And we are also good at just tossing out the itinerary when we feel like it! So, how does this look? Do-able?

PeaceBang

This is all so helpful! I will be going to Madrid in January and spending 6 nughts in the region before flying to Barcelona for 4 nights. If anyone knows for sure that I can take a train from Madrid to Toledo to Sevilla, I would love to have that confirmation, as I would love to spend one night in Toledo.

Also, slightly off topic, does anyone have any good advice about visiting the Dali Museum near Barcelona?

marigross

After a long flight and jet lag, I not sure that you would want to get on the train to go to Toledo, crash for the night, and return to Madrid in morning. When would you enjoy beautiful Toledo?

I would recover in Madrid for two days and then do Toledo on the third day either as a day trip or spending the night and then going to Sevilla.

You could do the Escorial visit on that first day, taking the hourly train from Chamartin. This way you would have flexibility of coming back to Madrid if you think that you are too tired to enjoy your visit.

fuzzylogic

Your first itinerary was better - and great to see someone planning to stay overnight in Toledo.

Personally I would skip the day you'd allocated to l'Escorial and use it to stop in Cordoba on the way south.

I confess I have not been to Avila or Segovia and maybe they have more going for them. But the Mesquita in Cordoba for my money is the equal of the Alhambra any time.

But Granada is on the must visit list and it seems Cordoba isn't. Strange!

Happy travels.

Susan56

Well I booked the flights for the trip because I was seeing such great fares on Iberia that I was afraid that they could only go up. So I can still play around with the itinerary.
Marigross - We travel a lot and usually it takes us two flights to reach our destination and we still have energy for sightseeing when we arrive. That is why I thought that it would make sense to go directly to Toledo on the first day - taking that short train trip as opposed to a second flight. We arrive in Madrid around 7 am so I thought that even with the train trip we will have time for Toledo. And of course we don't have to leave early the next day for Madrid.
Fuzzylogic - I will have to go back to my guidebooks and check out Cordoba. But we don't want to drop El Escorial from the trip and we are limited to the eight day trip.
Thanks, I will be back with more questions once I can pin down our timing.
Susan