We are visiting España in late September 2018.
Currently have Pamplona for 2 nights and Zaragoza for 3.
Should we reverse that to P-3 and Z-2 ?
FYI - the entire 22-day trip is: Bilbao, Donostia, Pamplona, Zaragoza, Sitges, Barcelona. We travel by train. In cities, we love to walk 8+ km/day.
I'd leave it like that, I think.
Incidentally, I thought Teruel was (visually) more interesting than either Pamplona or Zaragoza. It means a 5-hour round-trip train ride beyond Zaragoza, but I thought it was worth it for the mudejar towers and other bits of interesting architecture. It's off the main rail and road routes and seems to get very few tourists.
Believe the way you have it works. Pamplona is good for 2 nights. More than that and you may get bored. At the same time, I not certain what there is to do in Zaragoza that’s worth a 3 nights stay. To me, 2 nights there would be sufficient too.
You can enjoy Pamplona with just one night, and Zaragoza with 2 nights.
Given the generous time you have, I would travel ... Pamplona (1) >> Zaragoza (2) >> Teruel (1) >> Valencia (2) >> Sitges
@ David in Brisbane, Australia
I appreciate your response, but my rule of thumb is a minimum of 3 nights in a location.
And, I am violating that rule on this trip.
We cannot do 1-night stands as we find them to be annoying.
I can appreciate that .... everyone is entitled to their own preferred style of travel.
For me, somewhere may be worth a diversion, but may not be worth 3 nights.
In that case I would leave out Pamplona altogether, it is mainly a destination because of its fame with San Fermin. Spend 3 nights in Zaragoza and 3 nights in Valencia .... both are great secondary cities, without the heavy tourist focus and crowds of Barcelona and Sevilla.
I wouldn't argue with omitting Pamplona, either. To me it wasn't all that exciting. Of course, I haven't been to Valencia, but I'm looking at that list of destinations and suspecting I'd flinch if I knew how few days were going to be spent in Barcelona. In any case, I'd choose Girona (which has some good side trips, too) over Pamplona or Zaragoza or (yes, sight-unseen) Valencia.
I don't mean to suggest that Pamplona and Zaragoza are bad destinations, but they're about 1 day each for me (aside from that proposed long day-trip to Teruel from Zaragoza). To me, Girona had more going for it, plus the attractive side-trips to Figueres, Cadaques and Besalu.
However, one positive point for hitting Zaragoza on this trip is that it can be really miserable in the heat of summer. The odds for bearable weather in late September or early October seem pretty decent. Pamplona can also bake in the summer, but it's not as bad as Zaragoza.
