Rose1979

Hi All

My fiance and I have chopped and changed our minds a few times now but thought it may be easier to come to the experts!!

We have travelled to Europe before and went to London, France and Italy. We fell in love with Italy so want to go there again this time. We travelled on our last trip in Italy to Venice, Florance, Sienna, Rome and Priano on the Amalfi coast.

On this trip we though we may see areas we had not seen on our last trip in Italy and we havent been to spain.

This is the Itinerary we have come up with so far:-

Fly into Barcelona from Sydney Australia

2 Nights Barcelona
2 Nights San Sebastian
2 Nights Valencia or Madrid?
1 Night Barcelona
Fly from Barcelona to Milan
2 Nights Milan
4 Nights on the Cinque Terre
1 Night in Bolongna
2 Nights in Verona?
2 Nights in Florance
4 Nights in Tuscany
2 Nights in Rome
4 Nights in Priano
1 Night in Rome
Fly back to Sydney Australia

Questions we have is what do you think of the Itinerary?
Is it possible to drive through Spain or are the distances to far apart?
Should we add some extra time in Spain and maybe go down south?
We would like to hire a car in Italy as well should we pick it up in Bologna or the end of our trip in the CT? We will drop the car off in Rome.

This is also our Honeymoon so wanted to go places where we would be able to relax as well

Sorry about all the questions I hope I havent asked to many questions.

Thanks in advance for your help and suggestions.

Rose1979

I forgot to mention our wedding is on September 1 2007 so will travel after that.

Kate_W

I think your itinerary involves too much moving around, especially for a honeymoon. Even if you are intrepid travellers who are used to moving around a lot, I think you are under-estimating how tired you will be after your wedding.

In 2005, my well-travelled new husband and I (also well-travelled) spent a month in Spain and Morocco for our honeymoon. Thankfully, we had about a 10-day break between the wedding and the start of the honeymoon. (We got to recover from the wedding on company time.) Even so, we were frazzled, especially at the start of the trip. We had a few 3-night stays in our trip, but mostly we moved around every 1-2 nights, i.e.

2 nights Amsterdam (business trip)
1 night Barcelona
3 nights Cadaques
3 nights Barcelona
1 night Madrid
2 nights Marrakech
5 nights hiking in the mountains
2 nights Essaouira
2 nights Marrakech
1 night London

Although it was good to visit so many places (some of which were return visits for one of us), that was way too much moving around and packing. We spent a lot of the trip on trains, planes or on the way to or from trains or planes.

In Spain you are covering a fair distance and moving every few days. It's possible - especially if you fly - but you might be better off either focusing most of your trip on Spain (if you want to cover so many regions) or trying to cover only one or two regions in Spain. For example, Madrid and San Sebastián might be reasonable, but not all of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and San Sebastián.

Can you fly directly to Barcelona from Australia, or do you have to connect through Madrid? If you can fly directly to Barcelona, then I would suggest that Barcelona-Valencia plus the the area along the coast northwest of Barcelona (e.g. Girona, Cadaques etc). Girona has an airport that some discount carriers use. Barcelona + Madrid is a possibility, but if so I would drop either Valencia or San Sebastián. Aim for at least 3 days in each city or town, especially at the start of your honeymoon.

Rose1979

Singapore Airlines flys directly into Barcelona VIA Singapore so thats why we are staring there. How far is barcelona to San Sebastian? We have just seen it on a Travel Show and looks amazing and relaxing.

Kate_W

To an Australian (or a Canadian, like me), San Sebastian doesn't seem far from Barcelona but Spain is a rather large country and transportation routes between certain pairs of cities are not always the greatest.

If you can fly non-stop and direct between Barcelona and San Sebastian one-way for a decent price, then why not? (Although when you add check-in time, waiting time, baggage retrieval time and travelling to and from airports, which are usually outside the city centre, a short internal flight can still swallow half a day of your holiday. But the train trip would likely be quite long, and driving even longer.) By contrast, if you wanted to go to Andalucia from Madrid, you could hop the high speed train from the city centre and get there in a couple of hours, easily. So it depends a lot on the routes.

Cadaques is not the same kind of seaside scenery as San Sebastian but it is lovely in its own right (rocky cliffs, fishing boats, pretty little white village houses, Dali used to stay there) - I encourage you to have a look at it (check out the 3* Hotel Rocamar, too).

Rose1979

Thanks I will look into that and see how I go. Like you said the distance seems not alot but we really dont want to loose a whole day in travelling either.