Portugal & Spain in December: Realistic itinerary & Getting around Portugal?

My first suggestion would be to skip the Algarve this trip and fly from Lisbon to Seville. There are direct flights every day. If you do want to stop in the Algarve between the two, it's a 4-hour train ride down there and a 5.5 hour bus ride to Seville. It seems like a ton of travel time for just an overnight. In Lisbon if you want to do a day trip to both Belem and Sintra, you might want to add an extra night (4 total). I would suggest 4 nights in Seville with a day trip to Cordoba (in addition to the one you already have planned in Jerez). For the final 4 nights I would recommend Barcelona over Madrid at this time of the year. Barcelona should be a little less chilly being on the Mediterranean and it's so different from Seville, it really gives you a good contrast between the various cultures of Spain.

It is not necessary (or advised) to rent a car if you're sticking to the bigger cities. Public transportation is great to the day trips you've listed. Obviously, make a plan for what to do on the major holidays. Keep in mind that most places start to shut down very early on Christmas Eve as well as New Years Eve. Make dining/grocery shopping plans well in advance. You're going to lose several days of sight-seeing due to the holidays. I did almost exactly this trip at the same time of year in 2019 right before Covid. It was in the high-50s/low-60s every afternoon but the mornings are chilly and the sun goes down around 4:30 and it gets cold again once it's dark.

I'm unclear on your departure airport for the trip back home--is it Lisbon? If so, I wouldn't want four destinationa as separated as you have suggested--Lisbon, Algarve, Seville, Madrid or Barcelona. You'd need to return to Lisbon from either Madrid or Barcelona, creating another long travel leg. Every day when you shift your hotel base, you lose at least half a day, and it is frequently longer than that. How long is your trip, actually? How many nights can you spend in Europe, not counting the overnight flight? If you have only eleven nights in Europe, that's just ten full, non-jetlagged days. If you spend four of those moving on to the Algarve, then Seville, then Madrid or Barcelona, then back to Lisbon, you end up with just six days when you can fully relax and sightsee where you are without spending a large chunk of the day finding the train station, bus station or airport and dealing with the hotel check-out/check-in process.

To supplement the information Bill has already provided:

Unfortunately, despite what geography may suggest, Portugal and Spain do not combine well, especially on a short trip. There are very limited ways to cross the border without hopping on a plane. There are buses across the border in the south, as Bill said. There used to be a night train between Lisbon and Madrid, but that hasn't run for quite some time. Shockingly, there is no day train on that route (that I can find).

The Portuguese company Rede Expressos and the Spanish company ALSA seem to have some sort of cooperative agreement to run one daytime bus and one nighttime bus between the two capitals. It takes at least eight hours. Go to the ALSA website for the schedule.

You can cross the border in the north as you travel from Porto to Santiago de Compostela.

That's it unless you fly or rent a car. If you rent a car, you pretty much have to return it to the same country where you rented it; otherwise, there will be a high international drop charge--probably hundreds of euros.

I like Portugal, but the Algarve wasn't all that special to me. During the holiday season, the best combination of weather and sightseeing will be in southern Spain. Barcelona should also be fairly mild; it averages about 10 degrees warmer than Madrid at that time of year. You can definitely fly from Seville to Barcelona, but there are a few super-fast direct trains on that route that take barely over 5-1/2 hours. Others mostly take 6-1/2 hours or more and require a change in Madrid.

During the holiday season both flights and trains could be quite pricey, but the fastest route by car would be over 10 hours without allowing for any stops, getting lost, traffic back-ups, looking for parking or dealing with the rental agency. Normally, we'd all recommend that you buy the desired tickets (train or air) early before they reach peak prices, but the cheap tickets will be nonrefundable, and the COVID situation does make such early purchases riskier than they were prior to 2020.

Are your flights booked? Where do you return from?

Everything slows over Christmas and New Year, so try to plan on fewer location changes.

The middle of winter isn’t a great time to be visiting the Algarve - cold and wet plus some resorts close.

Lisbon can easily fill 3-5 days without any side trips, depending on your interests. Sintra, Evora and Cascais are the usual day trips.

As has already been stated, links between Portugal and Spain are not as good as you would expect.

Seville itself can easily fill 3 full days. I have been to the Real Escuela in Jerez on a non performance day, which was better, as you get a guided tour of the stables and behind the scenes plus you can watch them practice in the arena with no time limit. This isn’t available on show days. Cadiz is also worth a day from Seville.

Madrid will be cold.

Wow - thank you all for your kind and thoughtful input!

To answer question - we don't yet have our flights booked. Our Travel Agent had suggested flights into Lisbon & Out of Barcelona.

Thinking about all that is shared above, I think we will step back and switch gears a bit.

I'm going to look at deferring our trip to Portugal to another time (just my husband and I - when we can really explore from Porto, Lisbon, the Algarve. There seems to be so much to see. Given the distances from Spain, and the fact that we're traveling with limited time and over the Holidays, I think picking a few cities in Spain would be better and limiting the travel/lodging changes.

I love the ideas above, and appreciate the insights into travel, activities & weather in Spain. I'll look into flight options and see what we might be able to put together for Barcelona, Sevilla and Madrid.

Thank you, too, for the information on visiting the Real Escuela on an off performance day. That might work out really well, and wouldn't tie our itinerary to being in Sevilla on that particular Thursday.

Hopefully in the next year or two my husband and I will make it to Portugal - so you'll see me back on this board then!

Thank you all!