Hello people!

We are a group of 8-10 people (avg age- 22) planning a trip to Spain this September. Our rough itinerary is as follows:

24th Sept- Land in Madrid at 8:40am
Spend 2 days
26th morn leave for Seville and cover Córdoba on the way. We also plan on going for sky diving while at Seville. Please advice if it's worth going.
After spending 2 days at Seville, we leave for Valencia and spend a day there on the 28th.
29th morn we fly/take a ferry to Ibiza. Please advice on the mode of travel and also the time taken and the cost.
Spend 1 night 1 day in Ibiza and leave for Barcelona on the 30th by air.
Spend 2 days in Barcelona. Would 2 days be enough?
After Barcelona, we plan on going to Paris for 2 days by Eurorail.
3rd night- we take a flight back to Mumbai.

Please advice if the itinerary looks fine and also the places needed to be covered and on the mode of travel. We're not sure if we should rent a car or travel in train.
Thank you!

It is a terrific trip if you don't plan on seeing anything.

You have way too many places in too little time. You need to look at the actual timing (and costs) of transit to understand what this trip actually looks like.

You are planning on spending 1 day each in several major word capitals, ignoring many sights in the area you are seeing and ignoring the fact that you are moving from one country/language/culture to another at warp speed.

At a minimum drop Paris and make this a Spain only trip. If it were me I would drop Ibiza (you can party anywhere) and focus on what is different about Spain.

Suggest as a first step you lay this out day by day including the actual time in transit each day - and which hours they are. (You don;t want to have only early am or ate nights in thee cities since you are trveling for most of the day.)

For instance the ferry from Valencia to Ibiza takes about 7 hours and cost about $200 per person - and it takes up much of the day. So to return to Barcelona just transit to and fro Ibiza for half of 2 days in Ibiza will cost almost $400 per per person.

I count 10 days, which would allow for 3 stops, maybe a fourth for a night if transit time is minimal, travel in Spain, by train.

You don't have two days in Madrid. One and a half, yes. And if you don't plan to go to any museums you could probably do a quick tour around the city in that time.

You are leaving Madrid for Seville on the 26th. Ok. You plan to cover Cordoba on the way. Ok. That works, even if I think Cordoba deserves more time. Madrid to Cordoba is ca two hours by train. Cordoba to Seville is ca 45 minutes. But that's from train station to train station. You need to add time for check out/in and getting to/from train stations. And if you want to see the Mezquita (or something else) in Cordoba you need time to get there from the train station, too. And, no, driving is unlikely to be much faster, especially since you'd need to find parking space in Cordoba. Not to mention that you'd need at least two cars to fit 8-10 people.

Then you say "after spending 2 days at Seville" you leave for Valencia and spend the day there on the 28th.

What 2 days? You arrive in Seville on the 26th, MAYBE by early afternoon if you only spent a few hours in Cordoba. So that's half a day. The 27th is a full day, so that's a total of one and a half days in Seville. You can't count the 28th as both time in Seville, travel time AND a day in Valencia.

I have no idea of the travel times for the other distances. But you clearly aren't counting travel time in your itinerary.

You need to drop at least one place, maybe two.

Or you could rush through everything, see one big site in each city and spend half the trip in transit. Some people actually enjoy that sort of trip.

But with 8-10 people someone will oversleep, someone will want to stay longer at a site etc. Have you ever done this sort of fastpaced trip together before? In a country where you (probably) don't speak the language?

The high speed AVE train between Madrid- Córdoba (1h 40-45 mins) and Córdoba - Sevilla (41-45 mins) are city center to city center, very comfortable and super effective. Valencia is also on the AVE network, one departure every day in 3 hours 54 mins from Sevilla via Madrid. You can save much money (some 50 %) on the AVE tickets if you buy them in advance (renfe.com).

You land in Sevilla during the greatest flamenco festival in the world, La Bienal de Flamenco, Sept 8.- Oct. 2. Nine concerts on your dates, and tickets are now selling out. http://www.labienal.com/en/