Madrid Area Homebase

Thanks for getting back to me- any other places in Spain that you could recommend? We thought of seville but that’s the hottest, so we were steering clear. We liked Madrid because it had a direct flight from Split.

Not saying the architecture of the Palace is interesting, just trying to say that’s the type of thing we like to see (and not museums)

I enjoy architecture a lot but was bored by the Palacio Real. I assume that a more knowledgeable traveler would have appreciated it more.

I think you need to work up a list of the places you want to go before deciding on a suitable base. I'm not sure there's anywhere that will work as well as Madrid itself. It's sort of in the center of Segovia, Salamanca, Toledo, Cuenca, and Alcala de Henares. (I haven't been to El Escorial and just can't bring myself to list Avila with all those other places I like so much more.)

I think Salamanca is way too far from Madrid (I believe over 2 hours by train) to be practical for hitting the usual places people want to visit from Madrid. In most cases you'd first have to travel all the way to Madrid, then hang around for the next outbound train to your ultimate destination, amounting probably to 6 to 8 hours of travel time, round-trip.

However, Salamanca might work (I haven't checked bus and trains schedules) for seeing Ciudad Rodrigo (interesting walled town) and Zamora. Salamanca itself has a large enough historic area to justify (in my view) a two-night stay, so you might think about splitting your nights between Salamanca and Madrid.

Toledo is worth an overnight or two for anyone interested in architecture. I loved the Mudejar spots. I'd just find it annoying as a base for other side-trips, since you always have to head back to Madrid first.

A day-trip will be sufficient for Cuenca since you have no interest in its art museums; buy AVE tickets early to make it affordable and practical.

Alcala de Henares is an historic university town with a very pretty historic area. It's easily accessible from Madrid via a commuter train that runs frequently even on Sundays.

If you run out of side-trips before the end of the week you can consider Chinchon, a bus ride from Madrid. It's a comparatively minor destination but interesting.

Edited to add: Having spent some time in the area around Madrid and in Extremadura in late May and early June, the heat of July would concern me. You've only got a week, so you should be able to gut it out, but if you end up with more potential destinations that you have time for, you can use altitude as a tie-breaker; perhaps that will help a bit.

I was assuming you already had tickets to Madrid. If not, I wonder whether there are flights to Bilbao? That's a better gateway to the Basque Country. Or you could head NW to Galicia, which also tends to cool and overcast even in mid-summer (not so much in A Coruna, but Santiago de Compostela is sort of legendary for lack of sun). That would mean flying into Vigo, though and I'd be very surprised to find a flight from Split to Vigo.

If you're already ticketed to Madrid and head way north, you're trading off a fair amount of your limited time for (much) better weather.

If you want to get a sense of how bad it may be, use timeanddate.com to take a look at the day-by-day actual historical weather statistics for July 2018, July 2017, etc. I check out at least five years' worth of data. I've linked to Toledo's stats for July 2018.

I like Madrid and its many fascinating daytrip options but the July heat can be hard to tolerate. Same is true for most of Andalucia and Extremadura in the summer. So I suggest Santiago de Compostela as a base for Galicia. Much cooler than Madrid in the summer and great seafood. From there you could even take a daytrip to Portugal. Other interesting daytrips would be Finisterre or the Rias Baixas. Do you have any interest in walking the last few kilometers of the Camino de Santiago? And it is always neat seeing the pilgrims celebrate the end of their journeys in front of the cathedral. I know you said you are planning for early July but July 25 is the feast of St. James (Santiago), the town's patron saint. Lots of really neat activities go on for several days. The fireworks display on the facade of the cathedral is great. It would be great to be there for this feast. I stayed in Santiago for six weeks way back in my college days and loved it. We were there in July and I remember that most evenings we needed a jacket or sweater.

My other suggestion would be a combo of Bilbao and San Sebastian and that general area.

I was in Galicia and Asturias last Sep in order to escape the Madrid heat. It's much less touristy (at least for non-Spaniards) than other parts of Spain. The weather was also more tolerable. These places are no less scenic, just that they are less photographed by many guidebooks.

Since Madrid wasn't anything until about the mid-1500's, the architecture IMO is boring.

Salamanca has an incredible cathedral and old center. Toledo is even closer and is an great medieval town.

I also like Burgos, Zamora and Valladolid. If you like castles, Valladolid has three great castles within a short drive.

Anywhere you pick will have cheaper lodging, better food and less crime than Madrid - plus history.

The only nod I'd give to Madrid is for nightlife. You're still young so that may be important to you.

Hi Brad: will the ancient towns you mentioned also be unbearably hot in early Sep? I will take flights to and from Madrid, and thus am looking for places to escape to for a few days.

Depending on average temperatures is really risky, because they hide the extremes that can make a traveler's life miserable. In addition, some of the averages floating around the internet (such as those on cities' Wikipedia pages) are for time periods ending in 2010. It seems to me weather has gotten stranger since 2010.

So I'd recommend that you check actual, day-by-day weather statistics for your time period for recent years. That should give you a very good idea of the range of temperatures you might experience. That data is available at timeanddate.com. I've linked to Burgos for July 2018, but you should check several more years, and then look at other destinations you are considering.

From my experience during May-August 2016, it's hard to be reasonably certain of pleasant summer weather in Spain without going up in the Pyrenees (a valley may not work) or getting very near the Atlantic coast between Galicia and Basque. Of course, temperatures do go up and down, and it's possible to get lucky. I see that there were three days in July 2018 when the temperature in Burgos didn't reach 80F. They were widely scattered. It's entirely possible that 2017 and 2016 were not as hot,