Itinerary Suggestions

Your itinerary is fine - no issues. Personally, I would take a day from Toledo and give to Sevilla to be able to take a day trip to Cadiz. Cadiz would give you a feeling you don’t get from the other locations, plus it’s nice to be along the water.

We stayed two nights in Toledo back in 2017, but the main reason for the second night was because it was our arrival city. (I’ve been to your other cities listed 2-3 times within the last three years, except Granada.)

If you’re available this Saturday, the topic is Spain this month. Contact CWsocial if you’re interested.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/travel-meetings/travel-talk-sat-may-9-our-travels-to-spain-online-everyone-welcome

Jean, if you've attended these talks before, how are they structured? is there a host who speaks about a country in general? Or the highlights? Do participants ask questions?

We will be in Seville the exact same dates. Seville's Bi-annual Flamenco Festival runs from September 9 through October 3, and there are many special dances and concerts during that time. Here is the website: https://www.labienal.com/programa-general. Also during that time, in Madrid, is the Autumn Fair, which is a bullfighting festival (just sharing info, no judgment!). Information on that can be found here: https://www.toroslasventas.com/feria-de-otono

Ekscrunchy, CWsocial can speak in more detail about the Zoom meetings she hosts. I’ve attended a few when I’ve been available. Sometimes they were formatted to have a couple of people share their trip highlights with a small number of Powerpoint slides with pictures/info summary. People would ask a bunch of questions during or afterwards. Lately, it’s been more overall discussion- not presentation style. I always feel like it was worthwhile to attend. I know CWsocial just came back from a beautiful trip to Valencia (we’re Facebook friends), and she shared a nice trip report on the forum.

I was in the Andalusia region of Spain in February for the third year in a row, so I can answer questions about recent experiences there.

I don’t really think it fits together very well. Too many cities, and some of the train travel seems circuitous.

I would cut out nights staying in Cordoba and Toledo and assign those nights to Sevilla and Madrid, and just make sure you’re ordering everything to minimize transit time. I’m thinking maybe fly from Barcelona to Sevilla, train to Cordoba (if you’re going to stay there), train to Granada, train to Madrid. Then do Toledo and Segovia as day trips from Madrid.

There are a lot of cities spread all over the country and that requires a lot of travel time. To get to Toledo you need to go through Madrid. The itinerary works, but it’s the bare minimum number of nights needed for each location.

If the formally named Valley of the Fallen, now named Valle de Cuelgamuros, and Segovia are a priority you’d need to cut something out. Then, I’d recommend getting a rental car and driving to Toledo, the valley, then to Segovia. There is no easy way to get to the valley monument without a vehicle.

I think your plan is fine. As some of the comments indicate, there is just way too much to see and do in Spain for a 2-week trip. Of course you don't have enough time in any of your stays and you will be skipping many more places that you will be seeing. But you will see some of the very best Spain has to offer and you'll leave with a resolution to start planning a return visit.

My only recommendation is to get Alhambra tickets as soon as you can. They always sell out.

I think your itinerary works fine, too. We did something similar in 2017, except we didn't visit Barcelona since we had been there several years prior. Instead, we spent 2 nights in Malaga, and we had an extra night in Seville (4 nights) and an extra night in Madrid (4 nights).

If you want to add a night to Madrid so that you can visit Segovia, you could take 1 night from Toledo and add it to Madrid. We spent 1 night in Toledo, and that worked for us. We didn't see everything there is to see in Toledo, but we were fine with that, and it's impossible to see everything anyways. We enjoyed the evening we spent in Toledo when the city is illuminated.

Having to go through Madrid to get to Toledo is not a big deal. When we did it, upon leaving Toledo, we were then taking the train to Cordoba. So that meant taking the train to Madrid, changing trains there at Atocha, and then onwards to Cordoba. It was easy.