Hi!

Does anyone know the answer to the following questions...

How long (in hours) does it take to-

1-Drive or rail from Madrid to Barcelona

2-Take the ferry from Barcelona to Genoa

3-Drive or rail from Genoa to Rome

???

My husband and I are meeting friends in Rome, but would like to leave a week before to spend some time in Spain.

Thanks-Jill

Might want to consider flying, Vueling.com is only about 20 to 30 euros has two daily flights from barcelona to rome.

Rail Madrid-Barcelona: 4 hrs 53 minutes (fastest)

Rail Genoa-Rome: 4 hrs 46 minutes (fastest)

Ferry Barcelona-Genoa: 17 hours

Thank you to both of you!!!!

This really really helped.

Any recommendations on where to stay in Madrid and Barcelona?

Thanks again-Jill

search on here for those two cities and you will have more info than you can imagine.

then come back and ask specific questions. you will get plenty of suggestions to more specific questions, as generalities have already been posted.

also, you can fly from spain to italy on www.ryanair, and vueling one way for very reasonable rates.

What rail service do you use to get from Barcelona to Genoa? Is there a high speed train? We would like to go from Barcelona to Cinque Terre

Barcelona to Genoa ? Too far for trains. You would need no less than three changes...
Ferry is a leisure option and the quickest would be flying to Milan and go cinque terre from there.

I forgot, you can also get a train from Barcelona to Milan, a night train. But usually prices are much higher than flying.

jillfreeman,
Best way from Madrid to Barcelona is by rail. Please don't think of driving-long, tedious, tons of truck traffic, boring for most of the trip.

Rail Madrid-Barcelona:

2 hrs. 43 minutes (fastest, non stop) to 3 hrs. 24 min. (4 intermediate stops) on the brand new AVE.

Maribel: jillfreeman asked her question <b>two years ago</b> and has not been back on the forum since then.

(tbbeach topped it this afternoon to ask another question - but she has several other active threads going w/ the same questions so no real need to answer this one)

Yipes!
Sorry, thanks for pointing that out!
I completely missed looking at the date-mea culpa.

I didn't look at it too..oooooooops !!!!