Andalusia for 17 days - General Questions

You will probably be heavily fined/jailed and possibly deported from the country if you wear an FC Barcelona hat in Andalucia!

Lol :) just joking, it's fine, no one will really care, but you'll stand out like a sore thumb as a tourist... just don't take the rosemary!

October is a great time weather wise to be in Andalucia!

So, are you planning on having only two bases? Marbella and Seville? Personally, I recommend spending at least 2 nights in Cordoba and 2 nights in Granada. You need 2 nights in Granada to see the Alhambra properly. By that I mean you don't want to rush through the amazing Alhambra. We spent almost a whole day there, and then returned at night for the night tour. Cordoba is a wonderful city. While the Mezquita is magnificent, there is a lot more to Cordoba than just the Mezquita. You won't do Cordoba justice by seeing it as a day trip.

I don't know how far Marbella is from Malaga. It's possible you could see it as a day trip from Marbella. We spent 2 nights there and really enjoyed it.

You don't need a car for Cordoba, Granada, and Seville. We took trains and buses. The high speed train tracks to Granada are not finished yet, so you could take the ALSA bus to Granada, either from Seville, Malaga, or Cordoba. The buses are clean, comfortable, modern, and air conditioned.

Hope this helps!

Include on places to visit in Spain tour - Toledo, Valencia, Arcos De la Frontera, Nerja, and Alicante Spain. Skip Gibraltar and Morocco. Another option could be to venture off to the Algarve region in Portugal for a few days. It's near Southern Spain 2 hours from Seville Spain by bus.

http://www.algarve-tourist.com/index.html

This could be helpful: Bus schedules from Marbella.

I compeletely agree with RJean about skipping Morocco (which with your time limit should be read as "Tangier"). I haven't been to Gibraltar, so I can't make a valid comment on it. Morocco is wonderful, but Tangier definitely is not. The way to see Morocco is to fly there and visit at least Fes and Marrakech. There are many other worthwhile places; just not Tangier or the very modern Casablanca (beyond what might be necessary for reasons of transportation).

With the bases you are considering, Valencia, Toledo, Almeria and Alicante--mentioned by various people up-thread--are way, way beyond day-tripping distance.

Since Marbella has no train station, you'll be starting each trip with a bus ride if you don't have a rental car. It's not that there's anything wrong with buses, it's a matter of the time they take to get anywhere, especially if you have to transfer to a second bus or go to Malaga to hop on a train. There will of course be other towns on the same bus line as Marbella, and they will be easy to reach. From the schedule linked above you can make a list of the places a short bus ride away and research them to see which are most interesting.

I wouldn't try to do Granada as a day-trip from Marbella. ViaMichelin.com estimates a driving time of 2 hr. 4 min., but that's without stops, getting lost, looking for parking in Granada, or getting yourself from the parking place up to the Alhambra. At the very least you'd need to get a really early start that day. Don't forget that Alhambra tickets totally sell out many months in advance. I don't think fall tickets are on sale for awhile, but I believe all the May tickets on the official website have been sold.

From Seville you have a lot of destinations possible by train. Cordoba, Jerez and Cadiz are the major cities. You have the potential to save money on those tickets (probably especially to Cordoba) by buying early.

There is bus service to some of the white towns. Arcos is a fairly short bus ride from Jerez, somewhat farther from Cadiz, and I think about 2 hours from Seville. I'll be in Andalucía myself in April and have looked casually for a one-day tour to multiple white villages from either Seville or Cadiz. So far I haven't turned up anything that doesn't include Ronda, where I already plan to stay for 3 nights. I don't want a tour that rushes through Ronda plus 2 or 3 other towns, so I'll probably end up just visiting one of the others via public bus. There's a 1hr. 45 min. bus from Ronda to Arcos, but that's a lot more time than is needed from Jerez or Cadiz.

For driving times use ViaMichelin.com.

For train times use the Deutsche Bahn or RENFE.

For rail prices and purchasing tickets try RENFE; if that doesn't work, see what loco2.com or trainline.eu comes up with. Do not use RailEurope.)

For buses from Seville use Rome2Rio.com to find the name of the operating bus company and go to its website. Do not trust Rome2Rio's travel times, frequencies or fares. Alternatively, just Google something like Bus Seville to Arcos de la Frontera.

Don't forget Spain Day on.October 12 -- we once almost got shut out of hotels on this big holiday weekend.

Thanks to all of you for your responses. They’re greatly appreciated and have already changed our planned approach. Depending on what my wife wants to do we’ll either start or end with our 7 days in Marbella, flying or taking the AVE to/from Madrid and Malaga. We’ll get a car in Malaga for day trips from Marbella. Malaga – couple of times, Gibraltar, Ronda and any place else that’s under a 2 hour drive. We’re used to NYC traffic and fighting weekend traffic on Long Island.

Then we’ll travel to Granada, Cordoba, Jerez, Cadiz, Seville and some white towns. We can easily set up home exchanges in lieu of hotels for 1 or 2 nights almost anyplace. Then we’ll take the AVE from Seville or Malagato Madrid to fly back to the US.

We’re not even thinking of places outside of Andalucia. This is the first of 4 trips that we’re planning to Spain in the next couple of years. One focused on Madrid, another on Valencia and a third on Leon, where we have a friend. We do 2 -3 European trips a year so there’s plenty of room to fit them in. This trip will be focused on Andalusia.

I just received Rick’s Snapshot of Sevillla, Granada & Andalucia and I’ll be going through it a few times to set a firmer plan.
Thanks for the heads up on Spain Day. One of our options is to arrive on October 14 and that’s looking better.
Also, I was attempting to be funny about wearing a Barca hat in Andalucia. As a long time Barca fan I’m very aware of the competitive world of La Liga (nice to see Real Madrid in 3rd behind Barca and Atletico Madrid) and would never really wear any Barca clothing outside Catalonia. We have Maple Leaf’s on our backpacks and the first question I ask someone is “Hablas canadiense?”. There’s usually a long pause followed by laughter and we have a new friend. It’s amazing how an outlandish question can be a great icebreaker.

It’s strange that I’m planning this trip. Normally my wife does he itinerary and sightseeing and I take care of travel arrangements and lodging, which is the easy part, but she’s planning next year’s Paris trip in May – June of next year and won’t let anything interfere with that.

"We’ll get a car in Malaga for day trips from Marbella"

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this and I've no personal experience admitedly. But I would expect you can just as easily hire a car in Marbella rather than going to Malaga. Given the place it is, I'd have thought the majors like Europcar and Hertz would be in Marbella, plus independents. Hiring in Marbella puts you in a better position for Ronda and Gibraltar (great place by the way, unmissable) and avoids the Malaga traffic congestion.

Personally, I'd drop Almeria this trip. It's nice enough for a day or so, but it's a less good version of Malaga really. And it puts you quite far East compared to your focus. Going that far would make sense if you planned to continue eastwards along Costa Almeria, visiting Cabo de Gata, and then into Murcia. For your trip, however, I think that's too far.

"We’ll get a car in Malaga for day trips from Marbella"

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this and I've no personal experience admitedly. But I would expect you can just as easily hire a car in Marbella rather than going to Malaga. Given the place it is, I'd have thought the majors like Europcar and Hertz would be in Marbella, plus independents. Hiring in Marbella puts you in a better position for Ronda and Gibraltar (great place by the way, unmissable) and avoids the Malaga traffic congestion.

Personally, I'd drop Almeria this trip. It's nice enough for a day or so, but it's a less good version of Malaga really. And it puts you quite far East compared to your focus. Going that far would make sense if you planned to continue eastwards along Costa Almeria, visiting Cabo de Gata, and then into Murcia. For your trip, however, I think that's too far.

Hi Nick,

Thanks, now that we're learning more, we agree that we should not go east of Malaga.

Regarding we car. We thought we could be a little more flexible in our trip planning and now realize that we need reservations for some things like the Alhambra. We fly on a standby basis and the way we do it is to go to the airport and standby for flights to our preferred destination. If there's no room on the flight we've chosen, we look at out list and standby for the next one, and so on. The primary thing is getting across the Atlantic to Europe since once we're there we can take an inexpensive flight anywhere.

Now we realize that we have to decide on our starting point now, either Malaga or Seville and we'll have to plan the trip more rigidly. So what we'll do is fly to Madrid and take the AVE to Malaga or Seville where we'll pick up a car for the entire trip and return to the other location, take the AVE back to Madrid and then get back to the US the following day.

Our initial thought is to start in Seville. We have to select the dates to use the condo in Marbella and since we'll be there a week, we'll have time to relax a little before going home.

The Alhambra does cause issues when you prefer to wing it, doesn't it? I decided I had to drop an obscure stop from my itinerary (Melilla in northern Africa) because I might have run into transportation difficulties and missed my Alhambra booking.

It does screw with our regular play it by ear travel pattern but we'll adapt.

There are other places where not having a reservation, like the David in Florence or the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, may mean that either you don't get to see it or you spend an inordinate amount of time on line.

Those are situations where we'll book a guide or tour that has tickets and buck the line capabilities.

Marbella is a good location for day trips. It's ideal for Ronda, Nerja is a bit further away but certainly doable. Estepona is a very nice, often overlooked town, Benahavis is a great little town in the mountains with the best restaurants in the area (prepare for some very steep roads!) Gibraltar isn't my favourite, it has some interesting parts but on the whole resembles a tired, English high street on its last legs but in the sun, however I accept that others (typically non British) enjoy it. I wouldn't advise Tangier, a waste of time and effort for a dirty port city with very little of interest. I haven't really explored Malaga as we always fly in, pick up a car and head straight to Estepona or Marbella (about an hours drive) however we'll be back in October so we're going to explore the city.

Have a great time, October is a very good time to visit, the brutal heat of the summer has passed but it's still quite warm, often in the mid to high 20's so still plenty of opportunity for al fresco dining and spending an hour or two in the shade, people watching in Plaza de los Naranjos (make sure you visit the church in the square, I'm not a religious person in the slightest but I was impressed by the interior) in Marbella old town.