SPAIN Sevilla, Barcelona, and the train
 

Thanks to many of you we are ready to book a great trip to Spain . Half tour, half on our own. How many days do you feel we should plan in Seville, Barcelona, and Madrid? We are hoping to find an independent guide for Barcelona for one day. ? Also, if we want to take the train from Barcelona to Sevilla, 5-6 hours, how often do they run? (Does anyone know the website for the train schedule? We would want to travel the least expensive way. Is that foolish?) THANK YOU!!!
SG

3 nts in Seville; 3 nts in Barcelona; 2 nts in Madrid. We much preferred the flavors of Seville and Barcelona over Madrid. All the cities are easy to navigate on your own, think tours generally try to show you too much too quickly so nothing is truly savored. But that's us. Yes, you take the high-speed trains from Barcelona/Madrid/Seville in about that many hours, 2d class is extremely comfortable which will save you some money.

3-4 nights in Sevilla, 4 -5 in Barcelona, 4-5 Madrid
including a day trip from all three.

<<(Does anyone know the website for the train schedule? We would want to travel the least expensive way. Is that foolish?)>>

The website is google-able.

The least expensive way is likely a flight on Vueling.

If you want to save money on the AVE trains, book well in advance on Renfe.com to get the excellent Promo fares ( around €45 for Barcelona to Madrid, €33 for Madrid to Sevilla.

There are a couple of trains a day that go Barcelona to Sevilla without changing trains in Madrid, but they still go through there so it takes 5.5 hours. Might as well make that you Madrid time and spend a couple of days.

While in Madrid I highly recommend you rent a car and visit Toledo, Segovia and El Escorial. Goggle them...

I drove from Madrid to Sevilla and did a white town tour which included Gibraltar from Sevilla. Wonderful experience. The drive from Madrid to Sevilla was fantastic.

Be careful in Barcelona. I was pickpocketed by a clever young Moroccan. I was walking on the sidewalk under some balconies wearing shorts when I felt something wet on my left rear calf. I stopped and looked and it was reddish colored (probably tomato soup) A young Moroccan was walking behind me and to my right and said how awful someone on the balconies spilled something on ne and it was all over my back of my shorts, He happened to be drinking water from a bottle and had tissues in a small package in his pocket and started to wipe me down. It took too long and suddenly I got suspicious. He had in fact been patting me down to find my money. I checked and sure enough it was gone. He said I must have been pickpocketed in the train but I had just left my hotel room for the first tine that day. As he talked he was backing away and he could have easily out run me. So I asked him to give back my license and credit cards. But he insisted he took nothing. SO I went back to my hotel got more money from my stash, another credit card and called the credit card company to report the stolen one. And here I was thinking how nice this young man was to help me. Beware being distracted and too close to a local...

This is one of the classic scams and the simple answer is not to interact with people in this situation.

Immediately either go into a shop or cafe - or walk over net to a building wall and clean yourself off. If someone tries to help you push them off or yell for them to go away.

There is also an overnight train rolling between Barcelona and Seville (or Granada and other places) - a hotel train with some compartments even with showers and WCs in the compartment.

Yes www.renfe.com is the official Spanish railways site but many find it hard to get to work but give it a try as discounts can be significant over just showing up and buying (but discounted tickets are often non-changeable non-refundable so be sure of your dates and time and also since they are sold in limited numbers must be booked weeks or months in advance to guarantee - great sites for lots of great info on Spanish trains: http://www.budgeteuropetravel.com/id30.html; www.seat61.com; www.ricksteves.com.

And yes Barcelona, along with Madrid is IME the worst city in Europe not only for pickpocketing but muggings, physical crime rare elsewhere - Google muggings and Barcelona and you get zillions of hits!

For train schedules, the German rail site has most of Europe and it can be easier to use than some local ones -- you wouldn't book on it, of course, but to find times it can be useful. It has an English section, of course.

www.bahn.de

oh, FWIW, I completely disagree with the advice to rent a car while staying in Madrid in order to do local day trips. These are easy to do by local train or bus, at cheap cost, and most tourists would have no where to put a rental car, at least not cheaply.

Yes cars are useless in Madrid and even in day trip places like Toledo, linked to Madrid in 45 minutes by high-speed train - other day trips are easily done by train - Avila, Salamanca, Segovai, etc.