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Andalusia March trip questions

Posted by on

Hello from rain-soaked Northern California,

Thanks to your excellent feedback, our itinerary is set (below) and our hotels are booked for our Mother/Daughter March Andalusia trip.

We are doing some pre-planning of major sites and buying tickets in advance and then planning to be spontaneous for the rest of our time. We've also booked most of our trains. I have a couple of questions for this brilliant hive mind:

  1. Any idea when tickets for train travel from Granada to Madrid in March will become available? Right now, tickets are only available through the end of February and all of those seats are sold out.

  2. Should we plan to day trip from Seville to Ronda (we will not have a car)? If so, would you recommend we travel on our own or join a tour group? If on our own, would love some guidance on how to get there. Trainline.com has trains going through Cordoba, which seems like a lot of backtracking.

  3. What are some of your favorite things to do in these cities that you consider "don't miss" or may not be on the list of most popular things to do?

Thank you again for all of your suggestions!

Th March 2 land in Madrid and then train to Córdoba
F March 3 – Córdoba
Sa March 4 – train to Sevilla
Su March 5 – Sevilla
M March 6 – Sevilla (Alcazar)
T March 7 – train to Granada
W March 8 – Granada (Alhambra)
Th March 9 – Granada (Basilica San Juan de Dios);
Late train to Madrid
F March 10 – Madrid
S March 11 – fight home

Posted by
3643 posts

If you have any interest in art, you need more than a day in Madrid. 3 art museums. The Prado, of course. Thyssen Bornemisza, a very good private collection, spanning several centuries. Reina Sofia, worth a visit just to see Picasso’s Guernica. Modern and contemporary works.

I would swap out the second day in Granada for another day in Madrid.

Posted by
28082 posts

I'm sure all the March trains from Granada to Madrid are not sold out. It's possible a few individual trains might be, but this would be pretty far in advance for that to happen. My guess is that the tickets haven't been put on sale yet, or Renfe's ticketing system is down. https://www.renfe.com/es/en

I don't think you have time to go to Ronda. You have less than three full days in Seville, which has lots of sights scattered around the city. Ronda is nice enough, but it isn't Seville.

There seems to be an 8 AM train that gets to Ronda around 11 AM after a transfer in Antequera. That would be six hours on a train--not a good trade-off for a full day of sightseeing in Seville.

Damas connects Seville and Ronda by bus. A bus could be faster than a train (if you're lucky with the road traffic). But on Sunday the first bus (9 AM) takes 3-1/2 hours; that bus takes 2 hr. 55 min. on Monday. The 10 AM bus takes just 2-1/4 hours, but still doesn't reach Ronda until 12:15 PM. The fastest return bus (on Sunday, not Monday) departs from Ronda at 6:30 PM and takes 1 hr. 45 min. The regular 6:30 PM bus takes 2 hr. 45 min. On Monday there's also a 3:30 PM bus that gets back to Seville at 5:30 PM, but that really wouldn't give you much time at all for sightseeing in Ronda; at some point, you'd need to stop for lunch. Even if the buses meet those schedules (traffic-related delays can easily occur), that's a lot of time traveling back and forth for not so much time in Ronda.

There's probably at least one tour company running bus tours to Ronda and one or more of the white villages, but again, I don't think that's a good use of your time on such a short trip. You'd have an even shorter visit to Ronda on a multi-destination bus tour.

You have only eight full days in Spain and are trying to see four major cities. That's already giving you a less-than-ideal ratio of travel time to sightseeing time. I'd recommend not making the situation worse by trying to cram in City #5.

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