Well, my original inquiry got so many responses and gave me so much to think about! I'm fairly decided about making the trip the latter half of May, 2 weeks, maybe a day or 2 more if necessary. The itinerary I'm leaning towards would be (in this order unless you advise otherwise)
1. Fly into Madrid, drive OR train to Sevilla. Stay 4 nights.
2. Drive to Cordoba, looks like it's about a 2 hour drive. Stay 2 nights.
3. Drive to Malaga, maybe 2 1/2 hours? Don't know how long to stay, this wasn't on my original itinerary, if we do 2 nights, I might have to stay 3 nights instead of 4 in Sevilla.
4. Drive to Granada, looks like a little under 2 hours, stay 3 nights, maybe only 2.
5. Drive to Madrid, maybe via Toledo. It's a long drive though. Stay 3 nights. Fly home.

So one question is about trains. Should we take the train to Sevilla and rent a car there? If we take a train from Granada to Madrid, we'd have to drop off one rental car and pick up another, which seems silly. Or would we manage fine with no car in Sevilla? I thought there might be day trips we'd want to do, and have no idea about the public transportation options.

Note that my husband doesn't mind driving, but 5-6 hours is the better part of a day.

Can you fly into Sevilla and home from Madrid? Or is that very expensive? Does the itinerary and time allotted for each city look reasonable? If we pick up a car in Sevilla and drop off in Madrid is there a huge drop-off charge. My previous experience is that this works fine as long as you stay in the same country, but if you cross a border, the drop-off fee is sky high.

Thank you in advance, you guys are the best.
Alice

Spain is pretty big, not sure why you are driving so much when they have an excellent train system. I'm not clear on why you would have to pick up a rental car at the end of your trip if you take the train from Granada to Madrid. Why would you need a car at the end of your trip in Madrid?

YOu don't need a car in any city anywhere of moderate size or larger IMO. Sevilla is definitely a large city, it has lots of public transportation, and most of the time you'll probably spend in an area within walking distance, anyway, at least I did. Are you aware that is a city of over half a million population? You can do day trips by train or bus anyway, I did, but if you are already going to Cordoba and Granada, not sure where you will want to go for a day. I did go to Jerez de Frontera from Seville by bus, it was easy and cheap. I also went to Cordoba easily by train.

I think your timing sounds fine in terms of days in each place. I haven't been in Granada so can't comment specifically on that, but I suppose so.

Sure you can fly into Sevilla and home from Madrid, they both have airports. That's what I did, I always fly open jaw to save time. It shouldn't be much more expensive than the RT to Madrid, maybe none, you can easily check from where you are coming from. Be sure to figure out your time and other costs when you compare the two fares. YOu will likely have to transfer somewhere to get to Sevilla, but could have a nonstop flight to Madrid, but you would know on that. Then you have a choice of where to fly through. I flew BA on that segment so transferred in London from the US, which I preferred to transferring in Madrid, although the fare and time probably worked better for me. I know Air France is also a possibility as they are usually some of the best fares for me to Europe and of course they do fly from Paris to Sevilla (or used to) so that would be one option. I think when I went I wanted to fly nonstop home so went on BA through London but returned nonstop to US on Continental.

I agree with Christina. With the amount of time you have in each city there's little time for daytrips and a car would only be a burden. All of the cities you want to visit have frequent public transportation so you aren't limited by not having a car - and in many cases the train will be faster than the bus. A car would be great if you had time to explore more outside of the cities (ie. the white villages). But you just don't have the time in this itinerary.

Using public transport you could do something like: fly into Madrid, train to Cordoba, train to Sevilla, bus/train to Granada, bus to Malaga, fly home from Malaga (will need to connect in Madrid) or you could take a train back to Madrid from Malaga. You could do this in reverse. Or you could still start in Madrid but then go to Malaga, Granada, Sevilla, Cordoba and train back to Madrid.

As for timing, I'd personally spend 2 nights in Granada (versus 3), 2 in Malaga and definately 4 in Sevilla. If you're in Cordoba mid-May your visit may coincide with the Patio Festival, a wonderful time to visit. If it does, I'd tweak the itinerary to make sure you're in Cordoba at this time.

You do not need a car in Sevilla. I just returned from a trip that took us to Sevilla (6 nights; my third visit to the city); Gaucin (3 nights; visited Ronda), and Malaga (3 nights). Even with 6 nights in Sevilla, we had no use for a car while in the city. We did rent one on leaving SEville, and used it for the time in and around Gaucin. But we would not have neded a car if we had traveled from SEvilla to Malaga without the intermediate stop in Gaucin.

I agree with CathyM about splitting up your time--2 Granada; 2 Malaga, 4 Sevilla.

We flew into Madrid and home from Malaga and I do not think we paid much of a premium over the RT MAD fare.

You don't mention any rural exploring, so no need or a car. With a car in those cities, you have to arrange for parking (ugh!).
For checking open-jaw flights, try Malaga, Sevilla, and Jerez--I have gotten good deals on all three airports. While I really enjoyed my one night in Malaga, if I were you I would select a small town in the region to break up all the cities and get a different flavor. But I am a nature nut.

Okay, I will look into open jaw, flying into Sevilla and home from Madrid. No car in Sevilla or Madrid (we figured we'd 'do' Madrid on the back-end of the trip). I will definitely look into the date for the Patio festival.

I assume it's easy to get to Toledo by train or bus?

I'm going to get kick back from my husband who prefers to drive. He's good with no car in big cities, but in smaller places, he likes to have one. So for Cordoba/Malaga/Granada, the distances aren't bad, and we'll get to see the countryside.

So fly to Sevilla, stay there 4 nights, maybe pickup a car and drive to Cordoba for 2 nights, Malaga for 2 nights, Granada for two nights. Ditch the car. Take the train to Madrid, stay there 3 nights. Fly home from Madrid.

Or do the same thing without the car, basically.

It's true that open jaw is not a big deal in Europe, they kill you with it in the US.

Thanks SO much,
Alice

yorkshire, you submitted your reply while I was typing mine! Yes, we like nature too, sort of why we like having a car, so we can get to places we can't easily get to otherwise. What small towns in the region would you recommend checking out?

Alice

We did a somewhat similar trip two years ago, and had a great time! We priced out airfares and connection times, and while we've always flown open jaws on our European vacations, for this trip, it worked out best for us to fly in and out of Madrid.

We arrived in Madrid in the evening, immediately picked up a rental car and drove to Toledo for the night. It's of course an easy day trip from Madrid, but it worked for us with the car, and it was a delightful place for our first night in Spain.

The next day, after lunch, we drove to Granada. This is the only place on our trip (we didn't visit Malaga) that it was more difficult to get to on public transportation, so that's why we drove. We parked on the outskirts of the city, right off the highway, and walked to our hotel from there. That way, we didn't have to figure out the tangled city streets. Two nights there was the right amount of time for us.

From there, we drove to Cordoba and dropped off our rental car at the train station. We spent two lovely nights here, and really enjoyed Cordoba and all of the history in the city.

From there we took the train to Sevilla; our two nights there was way too short. Then a quick train ride to Madrid where we spent several nights to end our trip. Before we went to Sevilla, I wasn't quite sure why we heard so many wonderful things about the city - but now that I've been, it's all true. A great city to visit!

Our main reason for renting a car was to make it easier to get to/from Granada. Other than that, you don't need a car, as others have said. And plenty of people get to Granada just fine with public transportation.

The problem is with only 2 days in Cordoba, Granada and Malaga you won't have time to get outside to the smaller towns as you just have enough to visit these cities. These are not small towns in themselves. Granada is a nightmare to drive in.

If you're dying to explore in a car then you may consider skipping Cordoba or Malaga and instead rent a car between Sevilla and Granada to explore the white villages for a couple of days. Personally I wouldn't do this approach. Or see if you can add 2-3 days to the trip and explore the White Villages or La Subbettica.

Alice9, I can just echo what CathyM said--all of those places are large, so unless you eek out some time to stop somewhere in between them, there is no need for a car. The historic heart of Malaga feels small but is surrounded by highrises. Cordoba is a city but also has a small town feel in the old town. I have not been to Granada. I am a huge fan of Ronda, which I think is actually larger than Cordoba but it is in a great area for exploring. We found it easy to use the bus and train to access hikes. I have not had enough time myself on my two trips, but if I return it will be to the area around Grazalema or Antequera, north of Malaga. (Andalucia.com is a good resource.) Currently you have the perfect number of days in all of your cities imo, so you'd have to drop one to fit in a village--it is really just a personal preference. You could not pay me to drive though--I like to look out the window and chill!

I just did almost exactly this same trip in September. All I can say besides it was wonderful is DO NOT drive! It's a long long drive, it will take longer than you think, parking is expensive and in some cases you both will be screaming at each other while you get lost in the tiny streets and the GPS keeps saying "recalculating, recalculating". Really, I know people say this all the time, but I lived just lived it. It wasn't fun. Next time I will take the train for sure, at least for most of the trip.

Having a car also limits your choice of hotel. For example, at the end of the trip I was so fed up with driving we staying on a huge boulevard in a big chain hotel so that I wouldn't have to squeeze the car into the old town, again. But really the hotels in the old town looked so much more interesting. And we missed walking around in the old town after dinner. Not to mention it was a expensive choice made more expensive by the parking fees.

We took the car so we could see more. But really, from Madrid to Seville you don't really see anything that interesting. The landscape is flat and very similar. For the big cities you don't need a car. You can rent the car for 2/3 days when/if you need it, like Lexma said for example to drive between Cordoba & Granada and perhaps stop at Ronda or something.

As was said above, Corboda and Malaga are not small places. If Malaga wasn't on your original itinerary, feel free to take it off again.

Another tip, book your tickets to the Alhambra as soon as you can. I ignored this tip thinking people were exaggerating. They are not. I almost missed seeing the Alhambra.

Well, I will bring up the topic of (not) driving at dinner TONIGHT. And I will have to see whether we want to spend time in the countryside, or to maybe drop Malaga.

When we stay in cities and don't have a car, we've never previously had a problem - but it was always big cities (like Madrid and Sevilla). I really thought Granada and Cordoba (and Malaga) would be small enough that having a car wouldn't be an issue.

Last year we were in the Dordogne where you really needed a car, and ditched the car when we got to Paris. The year before, we had a car in Switzerland, but then ditched it before we went to Austria (Salzburg and Vienna). I love staying in the old city centers, you can walk everywhere, and parking is generally impossible there.

I had NO idea I had to book the Alhambra so early, especially since we're going in May. I won't know the date until I book airfare, I keep my dates flexible for that since it can make a big difference. As soon as I know, I'll book in advance.

Should I consider dropping Malaga and adding a day to one of the other cities? And I thought 4 days would be plenty for Sevilla, but now you make me wonder about that!

Alice

ps ekscrunchy, you were a BIG help when we planned a trip to Campania a few years ago. Nice to see you on this forum!

I love having a car normally. But really, this trip the car was a huge PITA. If you can't get your husband to ditch the car completely, then I suggest at least take the train to Seville, then pick up the car when you leave Seville and then leave the car at your last destination and take the train back. For us the last destination was Cordoba.

Every drive took longer than expected and most of the drive is horrendously boring except if head into to see the white villages. Personally with the wonderful itinerary you have, I wouldn't add the white villages. I'd add Toledo if you have extra days.

As for the Alhambra, you don't have to book now for May. I didn't mean to freak you out so that you book this far in advance. LOL. My point is more once you know you what dates you want don't wait.

We were there end Sept and two weeks before we could only get tickets for the last hour and we ended up having to change our itinerary around to for the only day available.

Ugh. I wish I could edit. Sorry for the bad grammar!

Both Sevilla, Córdoba and (wonderful) Málaga are connected to Madrid via the high speed AVE train. Granada is not, and it would mean a very long and tiresome train-journey to Madrid at the end of your trip if you have to go from Granada 4 1/2 hours). Córdoba is 1h 40 mins from Madrid, Sevilla and Málaga approx 2h 30 min.)

No need for a car in these cities.

Okay, sounds like no car is not an issue for any of the places on our itinerary. And I will arrange the order of the trip so we start in Sevilla and get back to Madrid from Cordoba.

One issue will be whether we decide to just fly open jaw TO Sevilla, home from Madrid, or RT Madrid, and then a train to Sevilla. After a long flight, I might prefer another short flight to having to get to and deal with the train.

And my discussion about not having a car at all went pretty well. We agreed that if we needed to we could always rent a car for a day (which we've done before for day trips).

Alice

If you fly into Madrid the train to the Atocha station is right there at the airport, accessed by an escalator in the terminal. The Atocha station is where you board the Renfe train to Sevilla.

true, but it's a lot easier just to transfer to another flight at the airport than to get to a train station and go into the city to Atocha and then deal with the train there, I think. That's how I decide when doing open jaw, which is easier, as cost is rarely an issue (open jaw is usually cheaper than a RT flight PLUS train fare, actually). The airport isn't that far outside Sevilla, either, so it is a short taxi ride into town from that airport.

I'm with Christina as long as the connection and price is decent I prefer to just stay at the airport and continue on. Try to book this all on one ticket so you're protected in case of a missed connection. This way you don't have to retrieve your luggage and recheck in. If you can't book on the same ticket just make sure you've allowed enough time for the next flight and potentially a terminal change.

You can take a shuttle bus from the airport in Sevilla to Puerta de Jerez. From there you can walk to your hotel if you're staying in the barrio Santa Cruz. If you're staying in the Center then the metro stop is right by the bus stop. Taxi from the airport to Sevilla is around 25 euros. Or if you get into Puerta de Jerez and then take a taxi to your hotel it will be around 5 euro.

Actually, after a long flight, and a short flight we would likely indulge in a taxi to the hotel. I'll start looking at airfare, I never know the best time to look. Probably never!

Thanks again, helpful as always.
Alice