TDudette

Bookmarking-after reading about your first days, I'm enthralled and must agree with Samuel about your wonderful writing style!

indiancouple

Thanks TDudette; do let me know your thoughts once you have finished reading the report.

insearchofheaven

Hi..Thanks for the reply

I have saved and printed ur report to take with me when I go.

Anyways could u please advise how to plan our trip ,we have total 5.5 days in seville before we go to India to meet family.

We will reach seville at noon on 26th November and depart from seville on 2nd Dec morning for Delhi.

Please advise how to divide our time in seville/granada/cordba..or maybe should we give cordba a miss due to short time...

I havent made any hotel resevrations yet and dont know how would we travel..maybe train between seville and granada..dont know how wud it be with a baby

also when i try to book tks for alambhara there are 3 choices on website..2 different ones for day,dfferent prices and one for night..which is best?
Thanks

annhig

hi, insearchofheaven [I like the screenname BTW]

may I butt in? i can only help with Granada and Malaga, but here goes].

if your priority in granada is to see the alhambra, i suggest staying in a hotel nearby, like the hotel guadelupe which we stayed in about 3 years ago, and it was great and cheap! we had a huge room with bath for €60 and there would have been plenty of room for a cot.

to maximise your stay, if you arrived mid afternoon you could book the evening tour of the alhambra, and then the mornnig tour the next day.

there are in fact two day-time sessions, [am & pm] and one evening one. you see a lot less in the evening but the illuminated nasrid palaces alone are well worth the trip. if you book a day time-trip, the morning one allows you to enter any time in the morning and stay all day; if a pm time, you only get to stay until they chuck every out in the evening.

the time on the ticket refers to the 30 minute time slot that you have to enter the nasrid palaces which are within the complex. otherwise, you can do what you like.

once you had finished your tour, you could get a bus to the albercin [moorish area] from right outside the alhambra ticket office. or set off back to SEville.

with ony 5 days, I wouldn't bother with Malaga.

regards, ann

indiancouple

I entirely agree with the suggestions of annhig. On any of the days in Seville, catch an early morning bus to Granada, reaching there at about noon or early afternoon. Make sure you have booked an afternoon entry into Nasrid Palace at Alhambra for that day. You may additionally opt for a separate night visit also, which people say is magical (although you see only a small portion of Alhambra in the night). Spend the night in Granada. In the morning, you can take a quick tour of the Albaicin area if you wish, and the Cathedral & Chapel if you are interested. And then catch a bus back to Seville.
It would have been slightly easier on you if your flight our of Spain was from Malaga instead of Seville, as Malaga airport is much closer to Granada than returning to Seville. Then you could have been done with Seville, then proceeded to Granada, and from Granada gone straight to Malaga airport to catch your flight out.
As for Cordoba,you can take that decision after reaching Spain. It requires no advance booking. The train ride from Seville to Cordoba is only an hour, and there are a dozen trains a day. If you feel up to it, you could easily hop on to a train any day for Cordoba, see the Mezquita, and be back in half a day (although Cordoba is worth a full day according to most). If you feel this is cramming up too much in 5 days, you could skip it. There is enough in Seville to occupy you for 4 days. I would not try any other side-trips in such a short visit.

tobyo

This trip report was recently mentioned in another post, so I went looking for it. I too have enjoyed reading it tho I haven't read the entire thing as I am not going to Lisbon(tho I was there the weekend of the attempted coup d'etat in Madrid in 1981...but I digress!). I booked a couple of the same hotels that you chose based on this report as well as other positive reports on trip advisor. and have noted many other things that you mention as well.

thanks so much for all the great information. I am planning a trip for my 50th birthday next May and your information was invaluable. In fact, we changed our stay in Malaga from one to two nights based on what I read here. I can't wait to see the Picasso museum!

cheers to you! and thanks again

tobyo

amsdon

I agree great report.

Tobyo look for another good one by comfyshoes.

indiancouple

Thanks tobyo and amsdon. Good to see the report still being useful to people after 2 years of writing. Could you send the link to the thread where this report was mentioned ?

tobyo

okey doke amsdon. thanks for the tip!

I don't recall in which thread I found the tip but will take a quick look. if I find it, I will link it.

tobyo

I found the thread where your trip report was recommended:

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...-june-2010.cfm

amycyma

bookmarking

while I haven't read it all, it seems like a very extensive report, thanks for your effort

amy

indiancouple

Thanks tobyo for the link. Gratifying to see one's report being quoted after 2 years.

Amycyma, thanx for the appreciation.

pgautam01

Hi indiancouple - we too are an indian couple from pune and like you we too love taking in as much as local flavor as possible when we travel. we will be traveling to spain this may end for 15 days and have taken a lot of advise and tips from this trip report. I have also read your other trip reports and must complement/thank you on your sharing your experience in such a detailed manner...
Our itinerary is:
BOM - MAD - 25th May on lufthansa
4 nights in madrid including a bull fight and tapas tours and a day trip to toledo
madrid to granada - alhambara (have bought tickets already) by night and then by day next day and depart to seville
4 nights in seville with a day trip to cordoba.. 2 nights of flamenco in seville. also noticed ur favorite restaurant is in seville.
6 nights in barcelona with a kayaking tour day trip to costa brava.
wish i had purchased an open jaw ticket to fly from barcelona back to mumbai but i guess couple goof ups are allowed. so we fly back to madrid and then back to mumbai.

indiancouple

Hi pgautam, nice to see this report being dug out and read 5 years after it was written !

I think you have a nice itinerary. Almost perfect for Spain. I gather that you are spending only one night in Granada - if so, I would have recommended adding another night there (we also spent only one night there and regretted it). Otherwise it sounds great. Do visit Ronda from Seville.

We should meet up sometime in Pune !

pgautam01

hi indiancouple, thanks for your reply.. we have budgeted our time in a way that only allows us 1 day in granada. we will try and get in a day trip to ronda possibly. another thing i was getting a bit concerned about reading thur this forum and others too but something that you didn't touch upon in your TR is about safety with regards to pickpockets or holdups. we have traveled to amsterdam, joburg, etc. and we live in mumbai now, so are we any more susceptible to crime in the spanish cities than these places and do we need to take any extra precautions like money/passport pouches or just use common traveler sense. We normally carry a DSLR and iphone/ipad and of course few euros and credit cards when out and about in any city.

gautam

indiancouple

Hi pgautam1, I dont think you need to worry at all about safety in Spain. Very safe place with regard to crime etc. So no problems about your DSLR, iphones etc.

Just be careful about pickpockets on metros in Madrid / Barcelona. They operate in gangs, and are very good. Be very careful of your wallet in such places. Otherwise you will be fine. We freely roamed the streets of Seville and Granada well past midnight, and never had anything to fear.

pgautam01

Thanks indiancouple. puts my mind at rest.. have a good weekend..

Sandy268

Thanks from me too, re safety. A fabulous report...I am researching for trip later this year....
PS. I had Churros last night in a Spanish restaurant in Australia

d_himan

Thanks indiancouple! We are an Indian couple from Mumbai, and we based out trip reading your tour notes! The similarities are a bit uncanny - I'm a vegetarian, the wife loves sea food!

We did the Lisbon-Madrid-Seville-Malaga-Granada trip. Most places you mention still exist! The one thing we really loved was the Renfe high speed train from Madrid to Seville. We were bowled by the sheer convenience!

Thanks once again! owe you guys a treat at the bar!

d_himan

and yes, we did this in Nov-Dec 2012. Cool, but not cold. Less harsher than North Indian winters.