Hi. I'm travelling to Spain in August from Canada. Will be flying to Barcelona and taking train to Madrid (day trips Toledo, Segovia) down to Granada, Valencia, and Flying to Majorca Islands for last 3 days. Is it better to purchase Eurail pass or buying individual train tickets when I get there. Is AVE trains covered under Eurail pass? I'm having difficulty getting this informatin online. Thanks.

Hi aiacono, I see that you're new here. You will get a lot more responses to your question if you re-post your question over on the Europe Forum (and tag it with Spain please)
http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/

To answer your question, I went to pretty much the same cities that you listed (except Valencia) last year, and I bought point-to-point tickets for all my train trips on Renfe. If you buy your tickets in advance on www.renfe.es, you may be able to get WEB or ESTRELLA fares, which are 40-60% off regular fares. Do a search on the Europe forum for Renfe and you'll get lots of recent threads on it.

Just an example, if you buy a Spain Railpass, you need to buy a 5-day one for all your trips, which costs $355.

On my 12-day Spain trip last year, what I spent on transportation (6 train trips, 1 bus trip from Granada to Seville, plus local city transport) was €140.

Thank you YK for your quick response. Yes I am new to this forum as also new to travelling in Europe. I understand that it is more economical to buy point to point tickets. Would you recommend hotels in Madrid and Granada, looking for 3* hotels near train stations. Did you buy tickets ahead for Alhambra online. I'm told that these tickets are hard to come by at the last minute. I don't speak spanish, is that a problem? Thanks. Anne

Hi Anne, you can check my trip report for hotels:
http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...rip-report.cfm

I don't speak Spanish and I survived. In fact, I don't speak any European languages but I never had any problems in Europe (and I've been to many countries there).

Yes, buying Alhambra tickets in advance is a must. This is the official website for tix: http://www.alhambra-tickets.es/

maribel's guides are very valuable for trip planning: http://www.maribelsguides.com/

If you have any more specific Qs, please post them over on the Europe forum as I have suggested earlier.

If you buy tickets online from www.renfe.es (see step-by-step advice on using this at www.seat61.com/Europe-train-tickets.htm) prices range from 49 euro (Web fare, limited availability) to over 100 euro.

With a pass, there's a 10 euro supplement to pay for AVE. So if you pre-book a Web fare on a no-refunds, no changes basis, the pass is saving you 39 euro.