Hola,
We land in Madrid at 13:05 (1:05pm) at terminal 2. We need to get a train to Seville.
There is a train that departs Atocha at 17:03 (5:03). Do we have enough time to catch that train?
There is also a train at 15:14 (3:14 pm) but that seem impossible to make.
Appreciate all help on this.
Are you considering buying the tickets in advance? I always hesitate to buy tickets for the day I arrive Europe. Planes can be delayed or even cancelled. If you wait until you arrive to buy the tickets, you may be able to get the earlier train. Not likely, but possible. I find that if my flights leave on time from the U.S. they can be 30-40 minutes early. This actually happened to us. We arrived Madrid at least 30 minutes early and breezed thru customs. We were able to take an earlier train to Sevilla than what we were thinking we'd get. Thus, we had additional time that day in Sevilla. Personally, I wouldn't buy train tickets for arrival day in advance unless there is the possibility that the train will sell out. Our train had plenty of seats, but hopefully, others will have a better idea.
Jules is dead on. There is a bus from the airport to the train station and you can buy your train ticket at the bus stop in the airport.
We are flying in from Prague…just FYI to be complete.
It’s does seem the bus is the best way to get from the airport to the train station.
What’s the risk on a weeknight in late September that the train would be sold out? I’m guessing low but have zero experience in Spain.
Appreciate all the support here!!
I'd suggest watching ticket availability for your travel date as well as the two weeks leading up to it. Spain is a country where I've seen a lot of "Full Train" indicators on some occasions when I've been checking schedules. It's not that every single train is likely to be sold out on a given day, but if you arrived and found five trains in a row sold out after you'd been flying all night, it wouldn't be fun.
When are you traveling? If it's well in the future, tickets might be available so cheaply now that cost might reasonably affect your decision. What's the current fare on the likeliest trains you'd take on your actual travel date? How are those same departures priced for the next 24 hours? Check again on the day of the week matching your travel date. Advance purchase of day-of-arrival tickets is always a gamble, but if you could save 50% (or perhaps more) of the ticket cost, you might deem it worth considering.
We were just there. I bought the premium tickets that permit unlimited changes. Lesser price tickets on RENFE will permit maybe 1 or 2 changes--look at the descriptions and rules.
The train from Madrid airport (at least the one we were on) required a change of trains at another station to continue on to Atocha.
That added about 15 minutes to the journey. It took us about 45 minutes to get from the Airport to Atocha.
We did carry on and didn't have to go through Passport control as we came in from Switzerland instead of JFK. This also put us in terminal 4 where the trains leave.
Thankfully we had tickets we could change because we ended up missing 4 planes to Madrid. The last ticket I reserved was 4 hours after we were to land, just to be sure. it was easy peasy to go to the RENFE office (near the atrium) at Atocha and change the tickets to an earlier train.
Bottom line-- if your plane is on time you should have time to get the 5:03. BTW: our train ticket from the airport to Atocha was included in the price of our ticket. we just scanned the barcode and away we went.
