Itinerary help - our 2023 Spanish odyssey - 60 days of wine and tapas

Bilbao is small and walkable (I live here), so anywhere would be a suitable location. You may want to stay in the old quarter (but no parking there and pedestrian area), or nearby at NYX hotel, TAYKO, Ercilla, Vincci Consulado, Coliseo Albia, Abando, Jardines de Albia hotels are all very well located and should have affordable prices.

The route is well thought-out!
I would remove a night from Burgos and add it to your FEVE adventure section - maybe in Oviedo or in Llanes/ Comillas to have a bit of rest.

You will have to choose between Trujillo and Guadalupe for your day trip from Cáceres, I would say Trujillo for ease of access.

And Baelo Claudia is great, but I am not sure how to get there without a car... It is fairly remote. Perhaps easier if you stay in Cadiz for 2 nights.

It’s a well planned route, but even with 60 days is rushed in parts for such a large country. Only one day in Madrid isn’t very long to recover from your brutal journey before you have a series of 2 night stops (1 full day), which will be tiring.

My brother is heading back to the U.K. from WA on Thursday - it takes him more than a week to adjust. He’s always awake early but asleep by 4pm. Even in winter, the Spanish eat at what would be bedtime for other nationalities!

You aren’t going to have time to see much of Granada other than the Alhambra with the long bus journey there from Murcia. Buy tickets well in advance for the Alhambra.

You will hit Easter school holidays for your last 9 days, so places will be busier. There are also school holidays for the first 10 days or so of your trip.

One night stays can old real fast when traveling out of a suitcase not to mention the logistics of hotels.
Suggestions:
-Add at least 1 night to initial stay in Madrid
-Cut out some cities and add more time to others.
-San Sebastian for at least 3 days
Also, we found using BlaBla car between cities worked well. https://www.blablacar.co.uk

Enjoy your time, we are doing Spain late 2023 for 30 days.

Overall, I like it. For me, four nights in Valencia is too many. Lugo is a wonderfully small town overlooked by most tourists. The wall is nice to walk along and is about 2km long. When we were there we stayed at Hotel Monumento Pazo de Orbán. It’s a short taxi ride from the train station and right at the wall. Your time in Ribadeo is about right since there is little to the town. We stayed at the Parador and the rooms afforded a great view of the water. I’ll assume the draw to Astorga is the Palacio de Gaudí since there isn’t much else in the town. The entrance of the cathedral is very pretty, but I was disappointed with the interior. Personally, we liked Almería better than Murcia City. Looks like a wonderful trip.

First night: I would certainly need longer than a day to recover from that journey! I'm a fair bit younger but considerably weaker.
I think in that first leg, you have a good distribution of longer stays (anything more than 4 nights) to break up the two-night stays. You lose some of that toward the middle and end, so if you can consolidate more, I would.
On laundry, I tend to travel in warm weather when laundry dries outside in hours, so you may need to scope out laundry services rather than doing it yourself. Maybe dryers in apartments are more common than I think--but winter clothes also take longer to dry. Just a thought.

Well to me this seems more like a grueling military campaign of the Punic Wars than a vacation itinerary, I think I would need a nice long holiday just to recover from this lol! Lots of 1-2 night stays which means you really only have a few hours in each city, especially if you are using public transportation exclusively. I would go back and cut the 1-2 night stays and reinvest those nights to seeing things properly without feeling to rush. A lot of the 1 night stays seem like they can be done as day trips rather than overnights, like Lugo and Merida.

On a side note I'm also very much interested in Roman history! :)

When in Madrid, see if you can make it out to the Roman town of Segobriga - an intact Roman town that was completely abandoned during the very early middle ages, only recently begun excavations, relatively undiscovered by foreign and even local tourists. Segobriga is fairly isolated in the plateau of La Mancha (one of the reasons why it survived), I stopped there with a car driving from Toledo to Cuenca, there is a small museum on site and the entrance fee was only 6 euros.

If you have a chance to stop by I would highly recommend, you basically have the ruins of an ancient Roman provincial town all to yourself, only 20% has been properly excavated. I'm sure you can hire a car from Madrid to take you there and back (only 1 hr each way). There are on-site docent tours in Spanish every hour or so.

Here is the official website of Segobriga (only in Spanish) but has good images and a areal video: https://cultura.castillalamancha.es/patrimonio/parques-arqueologicos/segobriga

Also a potential Ancient history day trip from Girona is Empúries, the site of the ancient ruins of a Greek colony from the 6th–3rd century BC. It's quite unique as the ruins sit right on the Costa Brava overlooking the sea. The area is also the site of an ancient Roman town called Emporiæ from the 2nd century BC - 6th century AD. There is a pretty good museum on-site containing artifacts and mosaics of the Roman and Greek periods called the Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya - Empúries.

P.S. also when in Sevilla consider making a day trip out to the Roman city of Italica, the birth place of Roman Emperors Trajan and Hadrian. About 30 min by bus (the 170A or 170B) from Sevilla, Italica was filmed in extensively for Game of Thrones. Admission only 1.50 euro!

P.P.S Don't miss the various Roman ruins throughout Zaragoza (aka Caesaraugusta back in Roman times)

Currently in Sevilla and have been quite pleased with our flat through Apartamentos Living Sevilla. We have also found Uber to be very efficient here and much less than a traditional taxi. Plan to use Uber/ Taxis to save yourself walking to and from places. Keep your on your feet time for the places themselves.

Have a wonderful trip.

I've been to most but not all of your destinations. I think you've chosen well, but I'm with the others who don't like so many 1- and 2-night stops. I believe you're going to find the trip as a whole to be quite tiring. I'm 71 now; my two recent trips were in 2016 (3 months) and 2019 (1-1/2 months), so you're traveling more than twice as fast as I did over very, very similar territory. As I worked on the itinerary for the 2016 trip (which I initially thought would allow enough time for all my top choices in mainland Spain, and maybe also Mallorca), I realized it just wasn't going to work, so I held off on Andalucia and made that a separate trip. I included the Renaissance towns of Ubeda and Baeza as well as Jaen, Ronda, and side trips to some smaller towns. Your timing is ideal for Andalucia, but not so much for northwestern Spain, which tends to be overcast anyway and will be cool in April.

Places where I think you really could use more time include Granada and Toledo. I was also glad to have more time in Cordoba.

Betanzos is quite hilly, so I'd recommend checking Google's street view maps as you decide on your lodging in that city.

Only one day in Madrid isn’t very long to recover from your brutal journey before you have a series of 2 night stops (1 full day), which will be tiring.

We are flying business class, so although our flight to Europe is long it won't be brutal. We also find that we get jet lag on the way home when flying west to east, not on the way to Europe where we will be flying from east to west.

Some of our early 2 night stops will utilise fast trains so we will get at least a day and a half in most places.

I would remove a night from Burgos and add it to your FEVE adventure section - maybe in Oviedo or in Llanes/ Comillas to have a bit of rest.

Thanks. We weren't sure how long to spend in Burgos. Your suggestion makes sense.

You aren’t going to have time to see much of Granada other than the Alhambra with the long bus journey there from Murcia. Buy tickets well in advance for the Alhambra.

Granada has been in and out on various itinerary drafts. It is back in as it makes the bus from Murcia a bearable length. Originally we were going to stay in Malaga for a few days and maybe see the Alhambra on a long guided day trip, but the bus from Murcia to Malaga is over 6 hours. Too long for me as my arthritis affects my spine and sitting gets painful.

For me, four nights in Valencia is too many. Lugo is a wonderfully small town overlooked by most tourists.

Do you suggest more than 1 night in Lugo?

Personally, we liked Almería better than Murcia City.

The lure of Murcia is for ease of getting to Cartagena. But I will see if Almeria could work for this.

When in Madrid, see if you can make it out to the Roman town of Segobriga

Thanks Carlos. We can make this happen. If we did this it looks like we could skip the day trip to Baelo Claudia which would make our time in Seville less busy.

Your timing is ideal for Andalucia, but not so much for northwestern Spain, which tends to be overcast anyway and will be cool in April.

We are good with cool weather. We prefer winter to summer. Timing is about making the ridiculous airfares from Australia work.

I would take a night from Valencia and add it to Zaragoza. It is an attractive city, with a history stretching back to pre-Roman times. In addition to its well developed Roman ruins, it has architectural remnants of its Moorish past in some of its churches. The completely intact Aljaferia Palace, often described as a mini-Alhambra, is still in use as a meeting place for the regional government. There are many Art Nouveau and Art Deco buildings as well. Many streets in the old center are pedestrianized, making it very pleasant to roam and explore.

As rule of thumb for your sanity and to have a better vacation, go to fewer destinations and stay longer in each one. Try and keep travel times between stops 1/2 day or less.

I have spent 18 months in Europe over 5 trips. I find a week in each destination works well. Since you are traveling in low season accommodations will be easy to find and not expensive.

The point here is that you only need to plan ahead for the next 7 days at a time. This gives you a huge advantage in itinerary flexibility. A rail pass would be very helpful too.

You will have a lot more info on attractive sights when you are in Spain and get ideas and feedback from other travelers you meet.

Have fun

I have rejigged our plans and cut out three destinations - Murcia, Merida and Betanzos - and redistributed those nights to Cordoba, Caceres and Lugo. We will use day trips to visit Merida and Betanzos/A Coruna/Santiago de Compostela and leave Murcia for another trip.

Valencia has been cut down to 3 nights and I have added a night to Bilbao - now 6 nights.

I have changed one of our FEVE stops from Comillas to Llanes and made that a 2 night stop so, apart from our arrival and departure nights in Madrid, we only have one 1 night stop - Ribadeo.

The longest travel day is looking like the trip from Valencia to Cordoba at around 4 hours by train. Most travel days are under 3 hours and some will be less than 2 hours. We are quite happy to spend time travelling as using bus/train means we can relax and both look out the window and enjoy the scenery.

It´s a long trip around Spain, my recommendation is to be prepared for all kind of weather. Most of Spain will be cold (30s-40s) in February, mainly the north (which is also quite wet). You´ll find the south warmer and drier. And with 6 nights in Bilbao, you´ll probably have the four seasons on those days, giving how variable our weather is over here. Food will be very diverse (no tapas in the Basque Country, for example, but pintxos, a different concept) but really good all over Spain.

It´s a long trip around Spain, my recommendation is to be prepared for all kind of weather

We will be. Where we live in Australia you can get all four seasons in one day. It is summer, but yesterday was only 13 degrees Celsius in the day and 4 degrees Celsius last night. In February, we often get days up to 40 degrees Celsius. We have good goretex rain jackets and shoes and don't mind rain.

no tapas in the Basque Country, for example, but pintxos, a different concept

We eat pintxos regularly at home in Canberra. We have a great local pizzeria run by two women from Leon who serve pintxos as starters. They make the most amazing squid.

Just to say that this looks like an amazing trip and I hope you will come back and report on it. I have seen some of the south and none of the north and the FEVE train really appeals. :)

I note that your time in Granada coincides with a special birthday celebration. Consider a splurge by staying at the Parador de Granada.

Wait and see for the real pintxos!! León is not a place for pintxos, but "raciones" or "tapas" and hard to imagine them in a pizzeria, sitting down...pintxos should always have standing, and using your hands to eat them (with a few exceptions, that I find hard to categorize as "pintxos" the traditional way).