October. 12 days-Barcelona: 4 days; Madrid: 3 days? to Lisbon.

There are no good train connections between Spain and Portugal. Although the flight to Lisbon is short you will eat up most of a day with the airport and ground transportation. With only 12 days I’d discourage you from adding Lisbon. Remember, your first day will be a jet lagged blur, so do you really have 12 days? I would suggest staying within Spain. You could visit Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla all with high speed train connections that will minimize your travel time. The Hotel Europa in Madrid was not a great hotel for us. We stayed twice, once on the RS Spain tour and once when we overnighted prior to our flight home. The second time the room was better (the first stay was bare bones). But, the location is quite noisy so if your sensitive you’ll need a room away from Puerta Del Sol, in the back of the hotel.

Personally, I would stay in one country or the other Barcelona 4, Madrid 4,
Sevilla 4 with a day trip to Toledo or Segovia from Madrid, daytrip from Sevilla to Cordoba. If you only go to Portugal, Lisbon 4-5, 2 Evora, 2Coimbra, 4 Porto.
If you do add Lisbon to Barcelona and Madrid I would do four days each place.
Hotels- We never stay in chain hotels if possible, although in Spain Melia is a good one. Book directly with the hotels as they may give perks for soing that or use Booking.com.
Is 175€ per night your price point? You can enter that into the filter on Booking.com to see what is available.

I agree that 12 days is a really short amount of time to try to see some of Spain and some of Portugal. To me it's not really even long enough for Barcelona, Madrid (including the obvious side-trips to Toledo and Segovia) and Seville (including Cordoba)--though I realize that many people do travel that way. In particular, note that starting your trip with just four nights in Barcelona gives you only three real days there since the first day is your jetlag day, and even Day 2 may find you not operating at 100%. There is a lot to see in Barcelona, and everyone wants to see the same top sights, so pre-booking is required for a lot of places. That makes short visits quite difficult.

Portugal is great, but for 12 days, stick to Spain. I would give Barcelona and Madrid equal time. From Madrid, you must visit Toledo and Segovia is another day trip.

Seville is a great option as well.

We have booked airline tickets. Arriving in Barcelona and departing from Lisbon. 12 days excluding 2 days air travel.
So based on your comments above we will enjoy exploring these cities with day trips to towns nearby. Other suggested tours and trips welcome. Hotels, cafes too.

Which most popular sights in Barcelona and Lisbon need to be booked now for our trip!in October?
Can you recommend small group guided tours for these?
Thanks again.

For Barcelona, we booked our tickets to the Sagrada Familia fairly early b/c we wanted to pick a specific day/time. I don't know that it has to be done this early, though (but I'm also an excessive planner!). We also went up the Nativity Tower and were glad we did to get the views and another perspective of the cathedral. We also booked an entry time for the Picasso Museum in advance to make sure we could get in (it will be crowded, but not as bad as the Sagrada).

Since we are SPG members, we stayed at the Four Points Sheraton and it was about 94 euros/night (in 2015). It was slightly out of the main city, but the cabs and subway were really easy to use -- totally worth the lower cost of the hotel. Plus, I appreciated that it had a/c in early June, as many European hotels don't, and it was modern/clean with large rooms. I know a lot of people prefer a more local hotel, but we were in our third week of traveling and it was exactly what we needed.

First, if you'll be available then, we should be having a New York City Rick Steves Travel Group meeting next Sunday in Manhattan at 1 PM. Details here: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/travel-meetings/new-york-city-meeting-sunday-august-12-2018

As long as you book your flight from Madrid to Lisbon now, and as long as you understand that you're just getting a taste of the three cities, your plan can work fine. You should also book your train from Barcelona to Madrid now, as the prices go up sharply. Let us know if you need instructions on how (it's not as easy as it should be, but it is possible).

For Barcelona, you need to make advance bookings for lots of things:

Camp Nou
Casa Battlo
Casa Mila
Sagrada Familia
Parc Guell
Picasso Museum
Palace of Catalan Music (although this seems to be less overwhelmed than the others, and people report actually being able to get a same day tour without waiting hours).

A short visit to Barcelona can be difficult, as it can be hard to juggle the reservations; you don't know how long you're going to spend at each place, so it's difficult to book more than 1 or 2 in a day. Of course, you can also focus on other attractions. For instance, the Sant Pau Recinte Modernista is a former hospital in the Modernista style. It's a short walk from the Sagrada Familia, it's great, and (so far) it doesn't require reservations. And many Modernista buildings can't be visited inside, so you can see a bunch of them with a walk at any time.

For Madrid, you may want advance tickets to the Prado, or you may want to get the Paseo del Arte which is good for all three "biggies" (the Thyssen and the Reina Sofia are the other two). All three museums have free times; I went to the Reina Sofia at a free time and it wasn't too crowded.

I haven't been to Lisbon since 2002 and I read that it is MUCH more visited now, so I'm not up on the latest there.

Ah, the flights are booked. Well, make the most of your time in Lisbon. We visited Sintra with this company http://yourfriendinlisbon.com and were very pleased. The transportation, guide made this worthwhile. Yes, you can navigate this all on your own, but you don’t have the time. We also did a food tour with this company https://culinarybackstreets.com/culinary-walks/lisbon/ and had a great time. If you love art this museum is a do not miss https://gulbenkian.pt/museu/en/. In each city choose centrally located hotels as your time is short. We stayed at The Lisboa Plaza on our RS tour https://www.heritage.pt. A tour hotel but nice rooms, great staff, convenient location.

We stayed in Spain at the end of September early October last year. Here is the feedback on the hotels;

• Barcelona: loved Hotel Midmost https://www.hotelmidmost.com, located near the Ramblas and Gothic Quarter, it is centrally located, but a welcome Oasis from the tourists. The rooms start at 147 Euros for the time of year that you are going. This includes a great breakfast with organic juices, fruit, and more than just continental. There is a roof top bar with a very small pool. The most important for us was the service. We had issues booking train tickets (Renfre site) and the staff not only booked our next leg of the trip, but also the rest of the trip for us.
• Madrid: we stayed two times during our trip (Doubletree near the Prado on points) and Hotel Europa for one night before we caught our plane. Normally, I prefer local style hotels, but I liked the location and the service better at the Doubletree. The Hotel Europa is centrally located, but really basic (breakfast is just a weird experience—next door at the bar/restaurant with really mediocre food). If I went back to Madrid would find another RS hotel to stay at.

A couple other things that we did that are a bit different than the normal tourist attractions. In Barcelona, we took a cooking class and market tour from Cook & Taste with a local chef. Most of our classmates were American and Australian tourists with limited cooking experience, so this is not a serious cooking class (although you will learn techniques from the chef) and the market tour is excellent as you go in advance to shop for the ingredients for your meal. Here is the link: http://www.cookandtaste.net.

In Madrid, we found Devour food walking tours and completely learned how to master the tapas crawl. Our guide Joy was amazing and clued us into the new restaurants on the scene, even suggesting a restaurant close to Hotel Europa that had some of the best food we ate in Spain (8 tables and we were the only English speaking folks there). Here is the link from the Devour site:https://madridfoodtour.com.

Have a great trip.
Sandy

I haven't done this, and I know a lot of folks on here don't like sleeper trains, but you might take a look at the Lusitania, as described here: https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Madrid.htm#Spain-Portugal.

Sandy,

How was your trip?

I do hope you come back and share your trip experiences here, thanks!