I'm planning on flying into Barcelona at the end of April and spending 5-6 weeks traveling thru Spain and Portugal. I'm reading like crazy but I'm hoping to to tap into the expertise here for a logical route. My thought I do to fly into Barcelona and home from Lisbon. I would really like to see Northern Spain...which is where my logistical confusion is coming from. What makes sense so I'm not backtracking? Thank you!
P.S. I just got back from 3 weeks in Egypt! What a blast.
I think the first question, before building an itinerary, is how you are planning to travel between Spain and Portugal? You may have already run into the fact that there are notoriously few connections between the two countries (for historical/defense reasons). Once you have figured out the method of how to pass between the two countries, the rest of the itinerary can be easily built out from there.
For April, I would actually move away from the North, it can get quite rainy and unpleasant that time of year. My inclination would be to head south from Barcelona, following the Mediterranean down to Valencia, through Murcia, into Andalucía, and up to Extremadura, and hopefully around Badajoz you can find a way into Portugal.
Although thinking about it now, you would probably already hit 5-6 weeks with only the Spanish half of that trip lol!
Agree with all posted above by Carlos (of course), but will just add this:
Flying home from Lisbon may not be the ideal departure point. Consider this: while connecting from southern Spain to southern Portugal can be more challenging than one might expect, it can be done in many ways (years ago, I crossed between Ayamonte in Spain and Vila Real de Santo Antonio in Portugal, crossing the Guadiana River on a little foot-ferry, then hiked to/from bus stations in each respective town for connections to the nearest car rental pickup location...all to beat a huge car rental one-way drop-off fee). Crossing in the north of Portugal is not difficult. If you plan to rent a car for some of this trip, you should factor in the potential fee for dropping it in Portugal (for me, it was enough to justify my adventure crossing that river, so I rented a car in each country), and look at how having a car cold optimize parts of the trip and allow a more creative itinerary.
Maybe fly in to Barcelona, work your way train to Madrid (by train), and travel around southern Spain by train as long as you can make it work. At some point you may want a car (for me, it was to access the Pueblos Blancos, the White Hill Towns, and to have access to much of Portugal outside Lisbon/Porto). Rent a car somewhere in southern Spain (skip driving in the big, old cities, of course), drive from southern Spain into southern Portugal. Work your way from the Algarve (far southern Portugal) north. Park the car while you are in Lisbon. Then continue straight north, crossing back into Spain, travel through Galicia, Asturias, the Basque Country -- all beautiful and awesome. Drop the car somewhere there in northern Spain (maybe Bilbao or San Sebastian), fly out or train back to Madrid/Barcelona for the flight home. Basically, you could do the whole Iberian Peninsula, clockwise, starting in Barcelona. You would be renting and returning the car all in Spain, so probably no big dropoff fee. As an added benefit, it would put you in northern Spain at the end of your trip (would be end of May or early June, which would be perfect), to give you the best chance for mild weather. With 6 weeks that could be awesome.
Hope that helps.
Hi Jill,
I hope you plan to give us a TR about your trip to Egypt? I was just there and would love to read about your experience and I know other forum members would as well.
Thank you! I really don't want to rent a car...I didn't realize transportation was an issue as I've been reading there is lots of decent bus service. You guys gave me some great info already!
I will try to do a TR on Egypt!
We have been all over Spain and Portugal except for the Basque region in the mid-north.
David's route is logical and allows you to get across the border in both directions, but I just don't see any way that's a 5- or 6-week trip. I really encourage you to think of this as the first of several trips to the iberian Peninsula. As you are already aware, there are great destinations in northern Spain in addition to the south and Catalunya. Weather varies a lot across that large country, so I think it makes sense to plan multiple trips with an eye toward optimizing the expected weather. Since you're traveling from late April to early June, it's a great opportunity to see southern Spain, which gets mind-blowingly hot in the summer. Barcelona and Valencia should also be pleasant. To me, northern Spain from the Basque Country across to Galicia (plus also the Pyrenees) is a great summer destination, because if affords a very nice break from the oppressive heat elsewhere in Spain. Even in the summer it can be overcast and rainy, and it doesn't seem to be subject to signficant heat waves--just an occasional day when the temperature might spike for a few hours in the afternoon.
Because of your timing I strongly suggest starting this trip in the south rather than in Barcelona. That way, you'll be out of Andalucia before the really unpleasant heat sets in. I spent 29 days in Andalucia in 2019, beginning on April 9. I had significant rain on a couple days at the beginning of the trip, when I was in Ubeda/Baeza/Jaen, but the weather was pretty great after that. It was warming up noticeably toward the end, though.
I explored flying (from Washington DC) into Seville, Malaga or Granada, but doing that was going to increase my airfare by about $500, so I flew into Madrid, collapsed for the night and caught a bus to Ubeda the next day. (I couldn't count on catching a bus on the day of arrival, and train service to that part of northern Andalucia isn't very useful.) If you wanted to start in Toledo (not in Andalucia, and possible rather cool in April) or in Cordoba you would probably be safe in waiting until on the ground to buy a train ticket for your arrival day. You should do that at the airport train station. The staffed ticket counters at Atocha Station to be avoided at all costs.
Edited to add: The Spanish buses are good, and there's train service as well. (I haven't been to Portugal for about 30 years, but I assume in-country transportation is workable there as well.) The problem is specifically getting across the border. There used to be an overnight train between Madrid and Lisbon, but I believe someone mentioned that it isn't running now. I think there may be a bus from Badajoz across the border. You can also cross in the south (though the Algarve isn't one of my favorite parts of Portugal), and you can cobble together something in the north. Any of those can probably be made to work, but you could end up spending a full day getting from the last place you want to see on the Spanish side of the border to the first place in Portugal. I'd try to avoid doing that twice, if possible.
Barcelona is a good place to fly into and Lisbon is good to fly out of (or vice versa). You can easily get around by planes, trains and buses. In the north some buses get there faster than trains.
When crossing from ES into PT it’s best to fly. There are nonstop flights from Madrid, Palma, Barcelona, Málaga, Valencia, Ibiza to Porto according to Skyscanner. You can also fly nonstop from Barcelona, Lanzarote, Tenerife, Alicante, Madrid, Valencia, Málaga, Seville, Fuerteventura, Bilbao and Gran Canaria to Lisbon.
Forget visiting the beaches because it’ll be too cold in Apr. I was in San Sebastian in Apr and it rained a lot so I wasn’t able to appreciate it as much had I gone in a warmer month.
I'm starting to plan for a November trip to Egypt, please do a trip report!! Or at least a post with your recommendations and takeaways. Thanks!
Thank you all SO much!!
Lot’s of odd advice here. The OP said they wanted to visit northern Spain.
You could go from Barcelona up to Pamplona. Do a bit of the Camino for a week, head towards Santiago then drop down to Vigo and you can get a bus across the border into Portugal. With 5 – 6 weeks quite easy.
