Narrowing down our Spain/Portugal trip September 2019..

You will pay a large drop fee if you pick a rental up in one country and drop it off in another.

Just some thoughts from someone who has never driven in Europe and hasn't been to Andalucía for over 20 years.

You don't need a travel agent to book a multi-city flight. Just choose that (rather than "round trip") on your flight website of choice. I like Google Flights, but there are others, like kayak. It's best to book directly with an airline; before doing anything else--even if it looks like it will save you a lot of money, I urge you to post here and ask for opinions.

I think it's a bit early to see schedules and fares for next September, but my advice for when it becomes possible is this: Check as frequently as you can to see what the fare looks like. That's the only way you'll know what is typical, which will allow you to identify an unusually good deal if one comes along. You can also set up fare alerts for specific itineraries that look good to you.

I don't know that you'll have any luck with this at all, but I'd check into the possibility of flying to Palma initially, since you have to fly there (or take a ferry) anyway. That first day is a jetlagged haze, so you may as well use it to get to your most challenging destination. But as I said, it may not be possible to arrange it that way.

Just enter your destination (Barcelona if Palma doesn't bear fruit) and departure point (Lisbon if you don't take my advice to drop Portugal) and see what options the flight website offers. Like you, I prefer to avoid Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle. I was able to fly into Madrid and out of Barcelona from my international gateway, so I have no experience making connections to get to and from Spain.

What is your home airport? Other posters may have some suggestions for you.

I'll disagree with Rick's consultant if he didn't try to discourage you from shoehorning Spain and Portugal into a single 16-to-18 day trip. As already pointed out, driving one-way across that border comes with a very high price tag. Four days to transit the Algarve (not my favorite part of Portugal, but I assume you have some interest in seeing it), drive up to Lisbon and see Lisbon/Sintra is too short for my taste. Those four days would be far better spent in Spain. Portugal has more to see than that and deserves its own trip.

As for the proposed time allocations:

Your time in Barcelona is painfully short. That first day is pretty worthless. I would definitely not take time away from Barcelona to spend in Valencia or to drive to Valencia.

It may be very difficult to see the Alhambra and a bit of the rest of Granada without spending two nights there.

I don't think many people would recommend fewer than three nights in Seville. And going to Seville and not seeing Cordoba would be unusual. I think the experienced travelers would rate Cordoba above Nerja, Arcos, Gibraltar and Ronda. I've only been to Ronda myself. I quite like it, but it's not Cordoba. This is by way of saying that six or seven nights isn't enough time for Andalucía, even aside from all those one-night stops.

The travel consultant that you spoke to must never have visited this part of the world if they considered that your itinerary was reasonable, as you are trying to squeeze far too much into your timeframe.

Although I prefer Portugal to Spain, on this occasion, I think you should drop Portugal unless you extend the trip to 21 nights.

You are likely to lose the first day to jet lag, so I would be tempted to add another day to Barcelona. Fly to Mallorca. It’s quite a way to go for only 2 days/3 nights there.

Nerja could be dropped and I would certainly give the tacky Gibraltar a miss. Ronda and the white villages could easily fill at least 2 days. I spent a few days in Jerez and Cadiz and found plenty to keep us occupied. Seville needs 3 full days to just scratch the surface.

As has already been stated, taking a car into Portugal is likely to be expensive for a one way drop and sorting out the Portuguese toll system is a pain in a foreign registered car.

We also live in the Seattle area and went to Spain for the first time last year. I’ll share the number of nights we were in each location (even though a few are different), and we felt only the number at Nerja could have been less (although we enjoyed them). I think you’re trying to cover too much territory which means you’re spending too much time in transportation vs. the fun of being at a location, Also, we never rented a car - didn’t need it. Trains & nice buses were efficient for us and cheap!

Toledo- 2, Madrid- 3, Córdoba- 1, Sevilla- 4, Ronda-2, Granada- 3, Nerja/Frigiliana- 4, Malaga-1, Madrid-1.

We flew Delta (used miles) so went Seattle-JFK-Madrid.

If you would like hotel recommendations, etc. let me know. Also, we shifted our normal September vacation time to the last week of September & first two weeks of October for Spain because of the expected heat, and we had beautiful weather the entire time.

You've picked a couple of beautiful countries for your next vacation!

We’ve taken trips to Spain and Portugal in early October the past 3 years and had great weather. Enjoyed every city/town we visited so much that we’re going again next week! Used public transportation easily for all travel and purchased most train and bus tickets online in advance as a matter of convenience because I prefer to have tickets in hand when arriving at the station rather than spending time at the ticket machine/office. Stayed in boutique hotels our first trip in 2015 and used Airbnb and VRBO after that since our overnight stays were longer. Here are very brief itineraries for each trip.

Spain 2015 – 16 nights
3 – Santiago de Compostela
3 – Toledo (by train via Madrid)
3 – Sevilla (by train via Madrid). Half day Córdoba
2 – Granada (by bus)
5 – Barcelona (by plane). Daytrip to Montserrat

Spain 2016 – 10 nights Barcelona. Daytrips to Girona, Montserrat, and Sitges

Portugal 2017 – 13 nights
7 – Lisbon. Daytrips to Sintra, Evora, private driver/tour Fatima, Batalha, Nazare, and Alcobaca
6 – Porto (arrived by train). Daytrip to Coimbra

Portugal & Spain – October 2018 – 15 nights
5 – Lisbon. Daytrips to Cascais and Óbidos
4 – Porto (by train)
5 – Madrid (plane). Daytrip to Toledo by train
1 – Segovia (by bus)

No group tours other than TastePorto which was excellent!

Thank you to all of you for your tips and advice. I will definitely be referring back to these! I wanted to make something clear about our consultant at Rick Steve's. This was not his itinerary. He definitely had us down for more days in certain towns (and some different towns) based on the little info I gave them before we arrived and did not have Portugal in the mix as we have just talked about that between ourselves. He was very knowledgable about Spain and even Portugal and admitted he had never been to Mallorca but gave us info on where to find more info on it.

I spent yesterday looking up flights (Shortest appears to be Seattle to Amsterdam to Barcelona, about 13 hours) and flying home from Lisbon. After looking at car rentals, trains, flights, I am thinking the only place we may rent a car would be in Granada for the outlying areas. After reading some of your responses, I am thinking that maybe we should reduce the amount of towns in that area also, maybe stick to Granada/Ronda and some closer surrounding areas before heading to Sevilla. Also flying from Barcelona to Palma, then Palma to Granada.

We really feel like we want to hit at least Lisbon and some areas close. After research, it looks like we can take the high speed train Sevilla to Madrid (about $80 each) the fly into Lisbon from there (about $85, 1hr 15 min flight). If we could do this all in one day, we probably would. We feel we would be willing to give up Madrid to see some of Lisbon (hey, they say it reminds people of San Francisco and I LOVE SF!). I agree maybe one more night at least in Barcelona.

I realize that Portugal deserves a trip of it's own, but honestly we won't be able to do to many trips like this in the future so would love to get at least 4 day or so there even if we don't cover a ton of space.

BTW...at this point, I have us at 19 nights.

Here is what I have at this point:

Barcelona 5 nights
Fly to Mallorca 3 nights
Fly to Granada (rent car) 3 nights
Drive to Sevilla (drop off car) 3 nights
High speed train to Madrid/Fly to Lisbon (if possible to do all in same day)
Lisbon and outlying areas 5 night

All advice is appreciated! And Thank you!

Not bad at all. Positioning Mallorca between Barcelona and Granada works well. And 19 nights is definitely better than 16-18. I see multiple daily non-stop flights between Madrid and Lisbon, so I think you'll be able to work that link out. It would be prudent to head to Madrid on a fairly early train and opt for a late-afternoon flight to allow for things to go wrong (though the Spanish trains were very reliable for me).

We flew to Mallorca first, then flew to Barcelona, then flew to Granada. Took the bus from Granada to Seville, then train from Seville to Madrid.

Going from Seville to Portugal seems the best.

I think you can get open jaw tickets without a travel agent. We did, flew into Mallorca and out of Madrid, and it was one booking.

For me I would look at this routing to minimise transit times.

Fly to Sevilla (3 nights)
(Pick up car)
Drive to Ronda (2 nights)
Drive to Granada (2 nights)
(Drop off car)
Fly to Barcelona (4/5nights)
Fly to Mallorca (3 nights)
Fly via Madrid to Lisbon (4/5 nights)

Thank you all!! Definitely more food for thought! All of this info/advice is really starting to help 'gel' the itinerary!