Lodging and Itinerary Help Needed for Trip to Andalusia
 

Hi All - I'm looking for some help in finding apartment rental agencies in Sevilla and Granada. We are planning an eight day trip and will be using those two cities as our home bases. We want to rent an apartment in both and we'd love to hear your suggestions. Our VERY rough itinerary looks like this right now:

Saturday, Day 1: Seville
Sunday, Day 2: Seville
Monday, Day 3: Seville
Tuesday, Day 4: morning in Carmona, afternoon at Italica
Wednesday, Day 5: drive to Cordoba (overnight stay)
Thursday, Day 6: drive to Granada
Friday, Day 7: Granada
Saturday, Day 8: return to Seville
Sunday, Day 9: Depart Spain

We are Spain novices and know next to nothing so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

hi Kate,

first of all, have you looked at maribel's guides at www.maribelsguides.com? they are free and vey informative. you amy find some apartment suggestinos there [can't help you, I've never stayed in an apartment in either place].

regaarding your itinerary, in order to avoid splitting your time in SEville, could you drive to Granada straight away when you arrive, then work your way back? this amy not work if you are arriving in the evening of course.

regards, ann

PS - make sure that you book to see the alhambra at night as well as during the day - it's truly magical.

You may have trouble finding apartment rentals when you're only staying for a couple nights, esp Granada - just 2 nights? And then 1 night in Seville on your last night? Any reason why you're opposed to staying at hotels?

I did a very similar itinerary in March 07 - 4 nights Seville, 2 Cordoba, 3 Granada. I thought it was a good amount of time in each location. We did it by train (Seville to Cordoba, half an hour, very easy) and bus (Cordoba to Granada, 3 hours but also very easy). You might want to rethink having a car as it will be a pain in the cities and transportation between them is so good. The day trip you want to take from Seville could be done with local tours, or maybe you could do a one day car rental.

I also think for this kind of trip hotels are a better option than apartments. Apartments make sense for stays of close to a week. There are plenty of good budget priced hotels, and meals out are quite inexpensive in that area.

I did a trip report, try this link to get to it:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...p-report-1.cfm

The thinking behind renting an apartment is that we're a family traveling together, so instead of renting three hotel rooms, we can rent one apartment with two - three bedrooms.

It probably does make sense to rely on public transportation instead of a car.

I'll take a look at your trip report now. Thanks!

I had no trouble booking an apartment in Sevilla for three nights. I used www.embrujodesevilla.com and stayed in Puerta Carmona III, which was immaculate and convenient. There was a language issue, as my Spanish is not very advanced. It all worked out though.
Two other companies I found were www.sevilla5.com and www.sol.com. Sevilla5 required a week stay for the apartment I was interested in. I agree, from place to place, the buses and trains are a better choice.

How many people are in your traveling group? How many beds & bedrooms will you need at the very least?

We will need at least two bedrooms and three beds for the four of us, though there may be one more addition to our group. I agree that the one night in Seville at the end of our trip is inconvenient. We haven't booked our flights yet so I assume we could just return to Seville the morning of our flight from another city.

Wow...I have to mention that there is a lot of great information and links in this Spain forum. I usually spend time on the Frommer forum, but this is great. Thanks!