need help with andalucia - spain and morocco in 11 days [august 2015]
 

hello all! i am in the beginning stages of planning my first trip to spain and morocco in august 2015. my husband and i will be flying out of JFK into barcelona and have 11 full days. normally i focus on only one country at a time, but we plan on starting a family next year and i've always dreamed of going to morocco so i wanted to combine it with this trip and get it out of my system. :) i am set with that portion of the trip, but am not too sure about andalucia.

here is a rough outline of our itinerary:
day 0 - jfk to barcelona
day 1 - barcelona [10 am arrival]
day 2 - barcelona
day 3 - barcelona
day 4 - andalucia - ??? seville province
day 5 - andalucia - ??? granada or seville province
day 6 - andalucia - ??? granada / alhambra
day 7 - andalucia - ??? malaga province / ronda
day 8 - andalucia, seville city center [5:30 pm flight booked from seville to marrakesh]
day 9 - marrakesh
day 10 - marrakesh
day 11 - marrakesh [11:30 pm booked from marrakesh to bcn, arrives at 3AM]
day 12 - 11:15 am flight from bcn to jfk

in my preliminary research of the andalucia region, i am interested in visiting seville, granada, and ronda and plan on renting a car. my husband and i loved val d'orcia in tuscany and stayed in a working farmhouse/agriturismo so we are looking for a similar country/rural experience in andalucia. i really like this place called hacienda san rafael, which is 40 minutes from seville (http://www.haciendadesanrafael.com/). so here are my questions:

1. should we make this our base for the 4 nights or should we spend 2 nights there and 2 nights closer to granada? if the latter, this should probably be the last two nights / three days as opposed to the first two since our flight to marrakesh is out of seville.
2. should we be considering staying in seville and granada instead of the areas surrounding it?
3. has anyone had any experience renting a car in granada and returning in seville or vice versa? based on this feedback, i will be able to determine which city to fly into from barcelona.

thanks in advance for any feedback and recommendations!

Why would you rent a car in Barcelona just to drive to Seville? Take a short flight (Vueling) or the train. No sense having a car in Barca - the Metro will get you where you want to visit in your short stay.

<< should we be considering staying in seville and granada instead of the areas surrounding it?>>

Yeah. Why would you stay outside the cities when you have such short visits? If you were going to be there for a week or so, that's a different story.

I think you're overestimating the time you actually have in Andalucia. If days 4 & 8 are travel days, it leaves you with 3 full days to see your 3 planned cities. My suggestion would be to drop Ronda. Don't waste time and expense messing with a car.

Day 4: Fly Barcelona to Granada.
Day 5: In Granada
Day 6: Train to Seville.
Day 7: In Seville
Day 8: Fly Seville to Marrakech

Remember also it will be sizzling hot in Andalucía, with temperatures topping 100, even 120F at times. This will severely restrict your sightseeing times.

@bigruss: we plan on flying into either granada or seville from barcelona. definitely do not want to to be driving down from barcelona!

@mmeperdu: thanks for the suggestion! train sounds like a better option and on day 4 and 8 if we actually stay in granada and seville we'll have at least half a day to still explore.

@alec: yikes! that's too hot!

My feeling is the key to a successful trip, long or short, is to simplify logistics, getting from one place to another, and reduce the number of places in a given time frame, rather than squeezing in more. No car and staying just in Granada, then Seville, does that and leaves you time to actually see where you are.

Regarding getting Morocco out of your system, prepare for that not happening. You're giving yourself a taste of a place that you'll very likely want a great deal more of. It's a place I never tire of, have been a number of times and see no end in sight. But it's one of life's great pleasures to find those places with which you have an affinity. And parenthood is not the end.

Regarding Andalucia temperatures in August. Can of course be really hot, but statistics says average August highs 86-91 in genuine Malaga city by the Med. http://www.wetteronline.de/klima-temperatur/malaga

In inland Sevilla the August average high is 93-100F. http://www.wetteronline.de/klima-temperatur/sevilla

I was in Andalusia at the end of August many years ago.
It was 40C in Granda. ( 104 F). Seville was dead during the day.