Hola!!
We arrived in Madrid on October 8th for my 60th birthday trip!
We stayed our first night at the Doubletree Madrid Prado. We arrived at 9:00am and were exhausted. We had a room on points, but the King room on a high floor was unavailable at the time. We opted to stay in the room with a full sized bed, and it was small, but quiet. Because we were so tired, I said we will take a room at 9:00am! I did offer to pay for an early stay, but that was waived for us because we took the smaller room. We slept like babies.

We took the train to every destination in Spain and train travel was wonderful.

Overall, the people from Spain were fantastic! We stopped so many people in the streets to ask for directions or help and ALL were great about helping us. Whether they spoke English or not, they hand gestured and walked us to the road and pointed. Everyone wanted to help us. I spoke a little Spanish which may have helped, but honestly, the people of Spain were terrific!

We headed to Seville for our 3 night stay at Casa del Poeta which was a wonderful hotel! I highly recommend this small hotel for your stay in Seville. It is walking distance to everything and it has charm and modern amenities. Staff is fantastic! Breakfast was delicious, there is a guitarist each night, and a roof top area to sit and they can bring you a drink. I have to say that I loved Seville. Seville is very walkable, we had a fantastic E bike tour and all of our meals were great!

We headed to Granada next. Our Granada Tapas tour with June was fabulous. She was so fun and the other couple in our group was fun too. We stayed at the Aurea Catedral Hotel which felt out of the zone. The hotel itself was very nice and we stayed in their best room, the Junior Suite! The only room on the top floor, 401. The hotel was great, but we did taxi to different things and so maybe more central would be better? But our room was wonderful.

We headed next to Cordoba. Our hotel, the Hotel Hospes Palacio de Bailao was very nice and again we had a Junior Suite, which I forgot I booked, but was nice! Cordoba has several nice places to see and we enjoyed our one day/night stay there.
Next Madrid!

Hola Girlonthego🙂 Welcome home!
How many days were you in Madrid and how many days in Granada & Cordoba?
Looking forward to the next installement.

We did a similar trip many years ago, so following with interest. girlonthego, can I suggest you modify the title to include references to Spain or places you visited + timeperiod so it catches relevant attention,it currently merely reads "Trip Report" - the Forum moderators can help.

It is interesting that you thought the Aurea Catedral was out of the way. The only place that we took a cab to from there was the Alhambra, otherwise we found it right in the center of the action and walkable to everywhere. We thought it was the best location possible.

Moderators can you add Spain to my title??

Thank you ANUJ! Hopefully they will see this because I can't edit it myself. It is tagged Spain, but that is way at the bottom.

We had 1 night Madrid, 3 nights Seville, 2 nights Granada, 1 night Cordoba and 3 nights in Madrid at the end.

ssinny, I liked the hotel Aurea Catedral and it is located right next to the Cathedral which was great. We had two great meals walking distance from our hotel. We also cabbed to and from the Alahambra. Our walking tapas tour we also cabbed to and we ended the tour in a busier area, which we cabbed back from. Everything may have been closer than we realized. We never had enough time to see everything and find out exactly where we were in relation to things. The hotel was very quiet which was great! The other area we went to had more walkable things happening, but probably would have been noisier for sleeping.

Madrid
We stayed at the Westin Palace on Marriott points. I knew ahead of time that they were under construction which I was a little worried about, but it never affected our stay. Our room was new and very nice and we were on the first floor, but technically, it was the 3rd floor. We had a view of the big traffic circle which I was worried would be very noisy, but the windows kept out all of the sound!
The dining rooms for breakfast, lunch and dinner were make shift rooms that I believe are banquet halls. The real restaurants under a giant dome are what is being worked on right now. It did not effect the food we ate though. Everything we ate at the hotel was delicious. We ate breakfast daily, had one lunch and one dinner at the hotel. Our last night in Madrid, we were wandering around trying to find a restaurant and it was 8:45pm and I said, lets just go back to the hotel and eat! We were tired and we had to get up and go to the airport in the morning. Food was delicious and service at the hotel at every level was top notch.
Our first day in Madrid it was pouring. So we took the hop on hop off bus around town and stopped at the Real Madrid stadium and did the stadium tour which was fun. The bus also gave us a look at where some things were.
We ate dinner near the hotel at El Barril. The food was very good.
Our second day was my birthday and we took the train to Toledo for the day. Now, Toledo was interesting, but I would never go back. The hills made me feel like I was having a heart attack a few times and I walk everyday at home. We did a walking tour which was interesting, but I was eager to get back to Madrid because there was so much more there to see and do in my opinion. We headed to the train station early, but all the trains before ours were sold out. So, we waited in the train station for an hour for our train to come.
Trains were a really great way to travel.
Our dinner in Madrid, we chose the Dani at the Four Seasons hotel. It is a rooftop restaurant and that was the only good thing about it. I hate to say it, but the dinner was awful and very expensive. We ordered a beef meal made tableside and the beef was very chewy. We ordered 3 sides and not one of them every showed up at the table. The restaurant had tons of waiters and only a few guests, but not one of them was around when nothing showed up. When the waiter came over asked about dessert, we said we never received 3 parts of our meal, he said oh well more room for dessert. No apology. My husband asked for a piece of cake with a candle in it but just the cake came that I ordered.
The whole meal was very disappointing. I thought the Four Seasons would have fantastic food.
Our last day in Madrid was very fun. We stared out at the Prado museum. I wasn't sure if we would like the art museum, but I signed us up for a tour and that was excellent. I highly recommend everyone to take the tour. Without our guide Alejandro, we would not have noticed anything about the paintings that he pointed out. We also learned about so many different artists and their life stories. Very interesting and we thoroughly enjoyed our time there.
In the afternoon, we went to the Kings Palace and Art gallery. The Kings Palace was wow! The chandeliers were unbelievable. It was so much gold on gold and the painted ceilings, everything was over the top opulence. The art gallery was also very neat to see.
More to come

I agree with your impression of Dani restaurant at FS.
A friend I was with in Madrid wanted to have a “ great” meal.
The only great part of the dinner was a fantastic terrace on the top of the hotel
She had a tasting menu, I had an appetizer and a main course. .
Very expensive, indeed. I ordered a glass of Rioja without asking about the price…can you believe 60 euros!
Madrid has an endless selection of terrific restaurants…
Dani. is not one of them, imo.

Overall, we really enjoyed our trip to Spain. I highly recommend the trains for travel. They are fast and clean and it's a nice way to get to the next place. People were very nice and helpful everywhere we went. I was on alert for pickpockets and such, but no one ever bothered us. I never used the under the clothes passport holder. I wore a fanny pack that had the cut proof straps and everything was in there. At night, I left everything but a credit card and some small cash in the safe and carried a small crossbody bag. My husband never carried money or a wallet. He left everything in the safe. While traveling from place to place, he wore his wallet in his front pocket. One thing, in two of our hotels, the safes were not anchored to the shelf. So, I was thinking, can someone just walk out with the safe? But no one did that and after the first day of carrying everything around, I just trusted that it would be there when we returned, which it always was!

If you like seafood and pork, Spain is the place! I don't really like seafood, but my husband loves it. He was in Paella heaven! The pork is delicious. Even our bacon at the hotel breakfast was more flavorful than bacon in the US. Wine is cheap and very good! I like white wine and drank the local light whites. They were all good! Most restaurants charged only 3-4 euros per glass. If we bought a bottle, it was about 20 euros. So, very reasonable for wine when dining out.

My favorite hotel was the the Casa del Poeta in Seville. The rooms were nice and clean and modern, but the hotel was small and I felt like we were in Spain. It had lots of charm and was really close to everything. We enjoyed Seville and we got lost everyday on the thousand streets we walked, but we always found our way back!
The Westin Palace was also very nice and centrally located in Madrid. I enjoyed Madrid and wish we had another day there to explore more.
The Ebike tour was good in Seville. Our guide Victoria was very informative and we learned a lot about the area and the gypsies and Flamenco. Funny, I fell off the bike while on a ramp that had a sharp turn. I skinned my knee but mostly bruised my ego. I was going slow and just jerked the bike on the turn too fast. I have an ebike at home so I felt really stupid. But luckily nothing happened except the skinned knee.
Our tapas tour in Granada was very good. The Granada Tapas Tour. We had June and she was so much fun and so was the other couple in our group. We did a tapas tour in Seville, which was not as good. Our person had a knee operation and we had a substitute. Unfortunately, the substitute had just came from the hospital from falling and hurting her back. So she was very nice, but I could see she was not feeling up to the night. It was a different vibe than the Granada tour. So I can't really say that the group in Seville is bad, but just they had a run of bad luck that day.
All of our hotels were nice. Most of our restaurants were very good.
Funny, I did not have time to practice up on my Spanish before the trip. I have been taking care of my mom and that has consumed much of my time in the last few months. So, I was tired when we arrived in Spain. But I did try to use it here and there as most people spoke English very well. But when we were lost and needed directions, my minimal Spanish and there hand gestures got us to where we wanted to go! I found most taxi drivers did not speak English. So, I recommend having your hotel and street written down in Spanish and hand it to them. They seemed to appreciate the ease of that.