Spain and Portugal buy ahead tickets

For Sevilla in October you probably don’t need to purchase in advance, but some people recommend buying advance tickets for the Alcázar and cathedral. When we were last there in October 2011 we didn’t purchase advance tickets and there were no lines. No idea how busy they might be in post-Covid travel.

Thanks Jaime, you truly are wise.

Holy Week April 2019, when I was in Seville, is not the same as October 2022, but for what it's worth, both those lines were very, very long 3 years ago. As I recall, both stretched across an uncovered plaza, which would have been especially unpleasant in hot or very rainy weather.

I think I bought the Alcazar ticket either one or two days in advance. It's not that those sell out; you just need to avoid that horrendous ticket line. The tour of the royal apartments at the Alcazar does sell out well in advance, but by all accounts that's totally skippable.

For the cathedral I used Rick's trick of buying the combo ticket at the nearby Church of the Savior. I don't know whether that's still an effective avoidance strategy.

If you are doing a day trip from Lisbon to Sintra I would pre purchase tickets for the sights there.

Holy week is a major tourist attraction in Seville (akin to Oktoberfest in Munich). I was in Seville for April Faire, which is more of a local festival than Holy Week. There was a line for the Alcazar but not horrible. It would probably have been worth having advance tickets. The Cathedral line wasn't bad at all. In many ways, we liked the Seville Alcazar better than the Alhambra.

The Alhambra, on the other hand, was tricky. I love to travel without reservations and Granada was no different. I had no trouble finding lodging but tickets for the Alhambra weren't easy at all. Rick's guide was invaluable because he listed several options for purchasing a ticket and time slot if you haven't pre-booked. One of his options worked.

We enjoyed a Flamenco performance in Sevilla and a similar performance in a cave home in Granada. We didn't have reservations for either.

October shouldn't be bad anywhere, but my experience with the Alhambra says it's a place you should book ahead.

We will also be in Granada and Seville in October. I already purchased our Alhambra tickets for October 12 which is a National holiday in Spain. I will probably order my Alcazar tickets soon. We like to order tickets ahead of time because it helps us spread out our costs. This way when we return home our credit card bill isn’t too large.