Critique my itinerary for early May Solo Trip

I personally would do Cadiz as a day trip from Seville rather than waste time switching hotels for one night.

You might also consider flying "open jaw" - starting your trip in Barcelona and ending it in Madrid. That would spare you one train ride and one b'n'b check-in.

Hey Rebekah,

I considered doing Cadiz as a day trip from Seville but I was worried being at the beach all day would sap the energy out of me and thought it would be cool to stay at an oceanside town for a night before departing. You think a day trip from Seville is worth it? Also, I bought a roundtrip flight a month ago to Madrid and unfortunately can't change it :(

Fast paced but probably mostly doable. I think 5/7 may not be - and 5/12 will be tight but doable if you take a late afternoon or evening bus/train. Go with the attitude that it’s ok if you DON’T do all the things on your list. You may want to sit down and enjoy just being somewhere - and that’s ok.,

Hi-
You don’t say where you are flying in from but I think your 5/5 day is not realistic if you are getting over several time zones on a long flight.
5/7- Toledo is worth seeing and can be done easily in a half day or so plus train time. Do get train tickets in advance. I recommend using thetrainline.com.
5/8 does not look doable to me. I think you need another day in Barcelona to see all this.
5/12 be sure to plan ahead for the Alhambra - many tourists. It is a fantastic place.
Have a great trip!

I agree that 5/8 is probably not practical if you actually plan to go inside all those places. La Sagrada Familia, Picasso Museum, Casa Batllo and Parc Guell all require timed entry tickets. It's critical that you already have the ticket when you arrive at each sight, because the ticket lines can be over an hour long.

Any of those four could conceivably sell out for a day--likeliest at La Sagrada Familia. What you really need to worry about is that online tickets for the very earliest time slots could sell out even a few days in advance, which would effectively shorten your sightseeing day. It will help that at least some of those places are probably open until 8 PM or so. But at some point in the day you're going to need a real meal, and you have to move from place to place; you're covering a fair amount of ground there. And how are you going to figure out how much time to allow between entry times? I've been to all those places and couldn't tell you.

Current status at La Sagrada Familia: Early tickets are no longer available on May 9 and May 10.

I urge you to position one of those problematic/must-book-in-advance sights first thing on 5/8 and another first thing on 5/10. That will reduce the number of back-to-back problem sights you have to deal with.

I haven't been to Montserrat, but I think it doesn't take quite a full day (though obviously your hiking plans are a factor here). If you can confirm that, you could hit one more of the Problem Four first thing on 5/9 before going to Montserrat. That would go a long way toward loosening up your Barcelona schedule.

Viewing conditions at the Picasso Museum can be very sub-par. It appears this varies, because some folks here have not had the grim experience I did back in 2016, arriving around mid-afternoon. So I'd try to make the Picasso Museum the first stop one day. And if you don't much care for early Picasso, I'd seriously recommend going to the MNAC on Montjuic instead. It's a larger museum, though, so it needs more time. At least it's near the Miro Museum. At either of those places you might run into a bit of a ticket line, but I'd be surprised if it was more than 5 or 10 minutes unless there's some sort of big-deal special temporary exhibition going on.

Be strategic about planning Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau. It's lovely but I've always been able just to walk up and buy a ticket within less than 5 minutes, so it can be the buffer (probably best in combination with an unplanned/untimed lunch) between two of the timed sights. Recinte Modernista is a large, multi-building complex. I spent nearly 3 hours there on my second visit, and I skipped reading all the information about the hospital period.

Online tickets for the Alhambra are sold out all the way through May 22. This is not unusual. The extra-cost/additional-sight Dobla de Oro tickets are sold out through May 19. You are fortunate that the Granada Card remains available for the days you're planning to be in Granada. The two-day card will cost you about 47 euros (less expensive than a tour including the Nasrid Palaces, I'm pretty sure, and you may get some benefit from the other sights covered by the card). The Granada Card is sold out through May 9, so you need to buy this right away if you are certain you are going to be in Granada on this trip. Be sure to buy the card that includes the Nasrid Palaces. If you decide to take a tour instead, be sure you buy a tour that goes to the Nasrid Palaces.

Granada Card website: https://turismo.granada.org/en/node/3241

If you plan to hike in the Alpujarras, I'm not sure your timing is realistic. That means getting back out to the bus station (a tram or bus ride from the center) and taking a fairly lengthy ride (at least an hour, I believe) on a bus that doesn't run frequently. And you must be confident of the return bus schedule.

I ran out of space above before saying I think you are trying to cover too much ground in too few days. All your destinations are worthwhile, but that doesn't mean they fit well into an itinerary that is only 11 full days (the jetlagged arrival day may or may not be useful to you).

I love Toledo and consider it worth a 3-night stay. I wouldn't go for half a day, given how little time you have in Madrid and Barcelona. The trip to Toledo is going to cost you at least 3 hours of travel time.

While Cadiz is interesting and pleasantly non-touristy, it ain't Cordoba, which you are skipping, and which involves a much shorter train trip. Cordoba is also on the way from Granada to Seville, so you could spend the day there in between Granada and Seville and save a bit of transportation time. There are lockers at the bus station near the train station. Research other luggage-storage options ahead of time in case the lockers are full when you arrive.

Note that Spanish trains on the main AVE line running from Barcelona to Madrid to Cordoba to Seville and also on the Madrid-Toledo spur line do sell out sometimes. Not usually very far ahead of time, but I've occasionally seen many trains on a single day marked on Renfe.com as "Full". Do not assume you can just show up at the train station and buy a ticket for the next train, because it may not work for you, and your schedule doesn't have any slack in it. In addition, the cost of your train tickets (except for Toledo, whose those tickets are fixed-price) can be a lot higher if you wait till the last minute to buy them. I mention this because you refer to staying in hostels, and I can see you're already going to be spending a lot of money on sight entry fees, especially in Barcelona.

If it's Tuesday it must be....

I dislike trips that feature a different hotel every night--too much unpacking and scrambling around, no matter how energetic or in good shape a person may be. Also, you never get to really know a place when you are just breezing through.

I think trying to go from Madrid to Toledo and then to Barcelona all in one day is just too, too much. Toledo is one of my favorite cities in the world, and deserves more time (and respect). Also, the Palacio Real in Madrid is always a pretty sight to see.

But then I see this trip was supposed to have happened in May as well, so hopefully your trip was enjoyable, even if hectic.