Andalucia---less than 5 days--help!

If I'm reading this correctly, you're going to Europe (from North America), and you will be there for all of four days (Monday through Thursday) then you fly home? Is that correct?

When is this trip?

You know, nobody at the airline is holding a gun to your head....if you find yourself in a plan that's really a terrible mistake, there's nothing that can't be fixed by throwing some money at it. Yeah, paying a fee to change one (or both) of your flights is an expense nobody wants to incur, but in some cases it's money well spent to make a change to get a much better trip that you actually enjoy, rather than one that you regret.

If I found that my spouse had booked us a trip to Europe that would give us 4 days there, I'd give her a hug, open a bottle of wine, and start looking at how much it would actually cost to change either the outbound or the return flight (or both). If you haven't investigated what it would cost to do something like that, that would be the first thing I'd suggest (after opening that bottle of wine).

Sorry, don't mean to make your situation worse, just saying that you always have options...

What time of year? I'm wondering how long the days are.

Do you have tickets for the Alhambra? It sounds as if you may not, in which case I'd put Granada in the "next trip" box. This would be more workable if you focused on Seville, Cordoba and whatever time you have in Madrid as a result of sleeping there your last night. You just have five nights (four full days).

You're traveling all over southern Spain just to end up with severely inadequate time just about everywhere:

Seville: one full day and some quite-possibly-useless jetlagged hours on the day you arrive. Are there sights you want to go inside? Have you verified that they are open on Mondays?

Ronda: Will you be able to manage 2 hours? 3? It's not a super-tiny place, and I don't know how close you'll be able to park to what you want to see.

Nerja and Nerja Caves: ??

The Seville-to-Granada day involves (according to ViaMichelin) 5 hr. 40 minutes of pure driving time. You also have to pick up the rental car (may not be as fast a process as in the US) and eat breakfast and lunch at some point.

Granada: 1 full day

Cordoba: 1/2 day on arrival day and I guess some morning hours on the day you fly home. Trains from Granada take 3:41 or 4:11 unless you want to go extremely early or not get to Cordoba until 3:20 PM. I wonder whether a bus might be faster.

Madrid: no time.

I would be too nervous about getting back to Madrid for my flight to spend the last night in Cordoba. I know the AVE trip is fast, but if there is an unexpected problem with your train, you'll be sitting in Cordoba, over 240 miles from the Madrid airport, and with not a lot of good options for getting there by 2:30 PM.

Rick's suggested itineraries do not allow enough time anywhere unless you're sitting on a tour bus without a care in the world. Even in that situation I really dislike the pace.

Edited to add: I think if you bought the tickets less than 24 hours ago and the departure date isn't imminent, you can cancel for free.

Thank you both for responding so promptly while I was reading further back in the travel forum at related discussions (eg. mode of travel). I cannot change the tickets, this is a stop on the way to Israel for a wedding. We were suppose to have at least a week but I won't go into that.

We arrive March 31 and depart April 5.

I think you are right; my plan to see the small towns and Granada in Andalucia will be saved for another trip.

We'll focus on Sevilla and Cordoba. No rental car necessary now -- that's a relief!

However, I am surprised that you don't think we can relay on a high speed train to get to the Airport for a 5:30 flight. We really need to be there 3 hours ahead? Yikes!

I cannot change the tickets, this is a stop on the way to Israel for a wedding.

You can always change a ticket. It may be expensive or inconvenient or you may have to make other choices.

On the way to a wedding, OK, so probably can't change the date of the wedding. So leave a week earlier, and do the trip you wanted. Yes, it will cost you something, but...not staying longer might cost you more.

Just something to consider, you do have choices. Pick the least bad choice.

If I'm understanding your posts correctly you're flying from Madrid to Israel for a wedding? If this is the case you only need to be at the airport two hours before your flight. That still doesn't give you much time, I like to buffer in some time to enable me to get to the station, find my bearings etc and likewise at the airport so I would be looking at being at the train station for around 11:30 which would mean there's not much time for Cordoba.

I'd forget Nerja too. The caves are only worth visiting if you're in the area for some time. Sure, they're interesting but not interesting enough to divert to when you have so little time.

Are your flights to Israel all booked? It would be easier and probably cheaper to fly from Malaga if not.

Of course you can travel from Cordoba to Madrid-Barajas for a 5:30 flight unless something catastrophic happens and wrecks the AVE schedule. It's my position that you don't really gain anything by doing that.

When figuring out your timing for the day-of-flight transfer, how much of a buffer are you comfortable with, given what happens if you miss that flight (which I now know is to Israel rather than back to the US or Canada)? How much is the one-way walk-up fare from Madrid to Israel? Is the Spain-Israel leg on the same ticket as the Israel/US-or-Canada leg? If so, would missing the Spain-Israel flight cause the final leg of the ticket to be canceled? (I don't know, but I think it might.)

I don't know whether you need to be at the airport 3 hours before a trip to Israel. Even if it's just 2 hours, you still need to be at the airport by 3:30. You have to take a train from Cordoba to Madrid. It's a 1-3/4 hour trip just to Atocha Station on the AVE. That's the schedule; how much extra time are you going to allow in case something goes wrong?

From Atocha you need to get to the airport. You have to get to a different platform at the (very large and relatively complicated) station, probably wait a bit for the train, then ride to the airport. I don't know how long that takes, but with a flight coming up I'd be padding generously. Let's assume 3/4 hr. or 1 hr. or so would be reasonably safe.

Now you're at the airport, but the train station is at Terminal 4. Is that the terminal your flight departs from? If not, how long will it take to get to the correct terminal? 1/4 hr? So maybe (wild guess) the official schedules and transfer time at Atocha and the airport would indicate a total time from Cordoba to your terminal of 2-3/4 or 3 hours.

A prudent person wouldn't count on that and would take an earlier train out of Cordoba. I'd add at least 1 hr. for that padding. So I'd say it's reasonable to plan to depart from Cordoba 3-3/4 or 4 hr. before the flight. Note that I, personally, don't consider that adequate, because it doesn't give you enough time if you need to travel on a regular (non-AVE) train or a bus. But I'm sure a lot of folks would just take a train departing one hour early and not be nervous about it. I think anything less than that is placing too much reliance on everything going just as scheduled.

So you probably need to be at the Cordoba station waiting for your train by roughly 11:30 (or 10:30 if you have a 2:30 PM check-in time). How much time will it take you to have breakfast, pack, check out of the hotel and get to the Cordoba station? Surely at least 1/2 hour.

My point is: What touristy things are you going to accomplish in Cordoba in the very few hours available to you Friday morning if you need to be at the train station by 11:30 (or maybe even 10:30)? If you instead travel up to Madrid late on Thursday, you can relax and actually do some sightseeing in Madrid on Friday before heading to the airport. You'll be very close, so you can place more reliance on the train (or bus) schedules to the airport; you don't need to pad every segment of your schedule on the off-chance something will go wrong. You're not worried that you'll be scrambling to cover 250 miles by 2:30 or 3:30 PM.

They eat dinner very late in Spain. You'll have plenty of time to get a nice dinner in Madrid.

I would try to do what was suggested above and change that first ticket to allow yourself more time. If not possible then with a total of 5 nights (and not even five full days) I would just tell myself that you can't visit all of Andalucia in that time frame and forget more than half of your plan. Spend 3 nights in Seville. Then train to Cordoba and spend one night. That's still only two days plus the first jet lagged evening, plus I'd probably spend the morning of the next day there, catch a mid day train, by the time you arrive the Cordoba hotel will allow check in, you can have a picnic lunch on the train. See Cordoba in the morning/early afternoon, then train to Madrid for the last night. As mentioned above being in the city you need to depart from is not only safer (less chance of screwing up and missing the flight) but less 'padding' time needs to b worked in so more 'free' time to do something. So you could spend a morning doing something in Madrid. If after your first day and a half in Seville you feel you have seen all you want to (most people enjoy at least 3-4 whole days there) you can always take a day trip.

Is Lisbon to Seville a separate ticket not yet bought? If so, then 8 would just split the days between Lisbon and Madrid. If ticket terminates in Seville then 3 nights Seville and 3 days Cordoba. I would be willing to spend 2 nights there and just travel last day....but don't let the ticket buyer plan your logistics 😉

3 nights Seville, 2 nights Cordoba would be lovely.

Get your ticket for the Seville Alcazar online. It's not a replacement for the Alhambra in Granada but it's beautiful in its own right and I like its colorful walls even more. Then go tapas crawling, watch a flamenco show, visit the Cathedral, cross the bridge over to Triana. Plenty to do in two full days.

For Cordoba, walk around the old town your first day. Lots of pretty streets and patios to admire. Go to the Mezquita the next morning and then the Palacio de Viana afterwards. Do watch what days you're there. Sites close early on Sunday and most of them are closed altogether on Monday.

I've gone straight to MAD from Cordoba. Barring a catastrophe, I don't see any reason not to do it. It's about a 2-hour train ride to Madrid Atocha station, then take the Cercanias train to the airport. Tickets are complementary with the high speed train from Cordoba - just go to a machine, put in the code and out pops your ticket. If it's too complicated, you can just buy the Cercanias tickets - only a few euros. Allow about an hour to the airport. If you are flying El Al you may need 3 hours at the airport for the extra security checks. If not, 2 hours is probably more than enough time.

Another possibility is to spend 3 nights in Sevilla and 2 nights in Toledo. Either visit Cordoba as a day trip from Sevilla or see it as a stop on the way to Toledo. Both Cordoba and Toledo have many Jewish sights, while virtually all the physical remnants Sevilla's Jewish past have be eradicated.

Toledo is on a spur line from Madrid, so getting there means changing trains at Atocha station. The extra benefit to staying in Toledo is that it's only a half hour train ride to Madrid, and in the event of a catastrophe, you can get to the airport by ground transport in a couple of hours.

WOW. Everyone has been incredibly helpful. Thank you for all of your help.

Howdy,
I am on a month's visit to Spain.

Any 'FAMOUS' place should have been booked when the nuptuals were children. I joke but only a bit. The Al Hambra in Grenada sells out fast even in early March.

The night visit to Cordoba's famius Mezquita is booked almost through the end of March.

If I were you with your limited time, I would try to change airline tickets so I could stay in Lisbon for five days.

Wayne iNES

@David, a hug and wine, you earn points as a wonderful husband! @OP, you received some great advice. Andalusia is beautiful, whatever works you will have fun! I just wanted to point out in regards to taking a train from Cordoba to the Madrid airport. I agree it is very risky, and we actually had the experience of having our train cancelled with the following train already fully booked in Cordoba. I'm not sure how often it happens, but it did happen to us. Fortunately, we were only on our way to Toledo.