Madrid and Barcelona in March

I would use one of those nights for an overnight in Toledo.

Have you purchased your airline tickets yet? If not, fly into Madrid or Barcelona and out the other. This is known as a multi-city booking. If you buy a round trip ticket in and out of Madrid for example, buy a ticket from the Madrid airport to Barcelona.

Thanks much for the input. Will look at staying overnight in Toledo. We have not booked our plane tickets yet, so will check out multicity and save a travel day between cities if the price is right.

Maybe steal a day from Madrid to add a day to Barcelona for a day trip to Monserrat? I'm admittedly showing my preference for Barcelona.

On our trips we try not to take day trips the day prior to departure in the event of a strike, an incident along the tracks, or some other unforeseen event that may prevent your return to the starting location.

Not Spain, but we had an incident a few years ago in the UK where power in the town went out and no trains could arrive or depart. The outage lasted about five hours getting us back to London much later than we had planned.

Be aware that the Mobile World Congress, a huge tech convention takes place in Barcelona In early March and many hotels are booked during, and just before and after, their dates, and prices at many are way above their usual rates for March.

Here's one traveler's personal experiences and opinions. My visits were all in February, except once in Barcelona in March.

Madrid is wonderful if you love European painting. You'll want 2 full days for the art museums. I've spent the better part of a day at the Prado twice on separate visits to Spain. I also went to the Thiessen on both trips. It's my favorite, because it has a good collection of Impressionists and on both visits, there were excellent temporary exhibitions as well. I haven't been to the Reina Sofia, modern art doesn't speak to me. I also very much enjoyed the Naval Museum (mostly the Golden Age of Exploration). The palace is definitely one of the best in Europe, if you like extravagant palaces (I do). Other than that, I can't find much to recommend the city. For me it's the least interesting European capital.

I loved Toledo. I spent 2 nights and the better part of 2 days and saw everything on my list. There's lots of beauty and history . . . and hills, San Francisco style.

Barcelona is one of my 3-4 favorite cities in the world. There's so much to see and do. Wonderful art museums, churches, architecture, and musical performances. The food is great, the vibe is good, and there are interesting neighborhoods to explore. And there are day trips if you have the time. In total, I've spent over 2 weeks in Barcelona and hope to go back before the end of 2026. The only sight I visited twice was the MNAC because I only budgeted 3 hours for my first visit and missed so much.

Thanks again for all the great input. When we started checking out hotels we found out about the conventions in Barcelona the week we had planned to be there. I'm glad we had not booked our flights yet because we could adjust our itinerary (I guess there's a lesson in there). For us a big part of European (and American) travel is visiting museums, so we are looking forward to that experience in both cities. We are starting in Madrid, and we've added a full day, two nights (with partial days on either side) to explore Toledo on your advice. We've extended Barcelona, although I'm sure we'll still leave some things undone (we always do), and we'll be heading home from there. It is great to hear from seasoned Spain travelers. As Rick says, keep on traveling.