My and my darling wife are planning to visit the entire Spanish Mediterranean coast by car during our two-week vacation next year. We are planning to land in Barcelona and start with Figueras and the Dali's museum.

We still didn't create the travel itinerary so we would appreciate if you can let us know where should we stay longer, and which places should we skip.

We are both 36 years old, so we are looking for nice cafes, restaurants, hotels, beaches, but also we want to have fun and meet new people.

We are planning to visit Barcelona, Valencia, and Malaga. And yes, can anyone say something about Mallorca? How can we reach it from the coast, and would it fit in this kind of vacation?

If someone can recommend any hotels, feel free to share.

Thanks!

I haven't been to Valencia or Malaga (or Mallorca) yet, but my time in Barcelona and Figueres is covered in this (long) trip report. Maybe you'll find some useful information in it:
Four Awesome Weeks in the North of Spain and Catalunya

Before you get too carried away, do you have a budget in mind, you know, for hotels, restaurants, etc.? And when next year will you be traveling? Traveling without a plan can be very difficult depending on the time of year.

The first thing you might want to do is do a little research, read some travel guides.

<<we would appreciate if you can let us know where should we stay longer, and which places should we skip.>>

I'm afraid that's impossible, nor is it what we do here. A hundred people will have a hundred different ideas about that, and none of them matters because it's your trip and must be tailored to what your interests are. You need to lay the groundwork by delving into guidebooks, studying maps, and reviewing websites until you have at least the outline of a plan. Then people will be happy to comment on it and help you refine it.

To begin with, though, I would dispel the notion of visiting "the entire Mediterranean coast of Spain" in two weeks, especially if one of them is Barcelona, where you could easily spend at least a full week. It would be hard to do the whole coast in any sort of meaningful way even in two years. I would instead concentrate on 4-5 places that really interest you.

With 14 days Mallorca is not an option. It takes hours on a ferry, and you could spend 14 days just on Mallorca.

Why not read some guides, and search online for places that really appeal to you.
You could drive the entire coast in 14 days, but I am not sure you would see much other than the road. Some of the Spanish coast is pretty depressing in any case.

Thank you so much. We are planning to visit Spain in August/September, so we still have a plenty of time to read and search for recommendations. This was just the initial idea, so I decided to look for some advice here. kja, thank you so much for sharing your travel itinerary, it is very thorough and shows what should we expect from the road trip through northern Spain. If we decide to go on a road trip, we will surely have it in mind.

I would hope that my trip report would prove useful whether you take a road trip or not!

I think if you limited yourself to about Valencia and north you could do a nice two week trip. Barcelona should get about 3-4 days, obviously you could stay a lot longer but my first trip there was that and I felt it was a good amount of time.



If you are really interested in Mallorca there is no reason why you couldn't pop over there for 3 or 4 days, it's only a 50 minute flight from Barcelona and there are numerous flights per day.



Then when you return to Barcelona you'd rent the car. You mentioned Figueras and the Dali's museum but there are other things worth visiting north of Barcelona - a cute seaside town, Cadeques plus a beautiful stone hill town, Besalu. You could probably see all three in a day with a car.



Then south Tarragona has roman ruins (a UNESCO site) and is close to Poblet Monastery, another UNESCO site. Valencia ( I haven't been there, but am booked for a trip next March) sounds like most people feel it's worth another 3-4 days (and has yet another UNESCO site).



But all those places would eat up most of two weeks. To go from Valencia as far as Malaga is something like a 6 or 7 hour drive, and that's not even the coastal route. I have been to Malaga and really enjoyed it, but I don't think two weeks is enough time to go that far.

IMO, how much time to give to any specific location depends on a lot of things -- what, exactly, you want to see and experience; your preferred pace of travel; whether you anticipate returning to the area; whether you prefer to see a few places in some depth or a larger number of places with less depth, etc.

I felt rushed with "only" 5 full days in Barcelona -- and I'm someone who takes full advantage of every single moment I have on the road, traveling at a very "hard" pace. I know that I'll never see all the places I want to see in the world, and so if I decide to see something, I want to see and experience everything about it that makes my personal "must-see" list, because it's unlikely I'll ever return -- no matter how much I enjoy it. But that's just me!

So my advice would be to think less about what you CAN do and more about what you WANT to do.

Hope that helps!

Since you mention Dali, I am just back from first trip to Spain, and we did take a full day tour from Barcelona to visit both the Dali Museum in Figueras and his home in Portlligat / Cadaques. If you like Dali, you MUST see the house he lived in with Gala. (absolutely must make advanced reservations, as they only allow a handful in at a time). That and the area around Cadaques were absolutely beautiful and we would love to go back and explore. Only about an hour apart, if it were me, I'd stay in Cadaques (seaside) and do a day trip to Figueras.(inland but still a cute town).

And we are beach people, so one of our days in Barcelona, we rented a tandem bicycle and rode all along the beaches. They are rocky but the water was beautiful and the people watching supreme.

Have fun planning and driving!

I'd forget Mallorca.

I hope you are aware of how hot it is going to be in Spain in Aug/Sept. It is true that being right on the coast helps those cities somewhat, though. I agree with the idea to limit yourself to the area between Barcelona and Valencia, including them, if you have only 2 weeks, especially since you say you want to stay in Figueres to start with (so I guess that's at least 2 days?). Joan has some good ideas.