Planning trip to Spain for 1 week

Seville is a biggish city. If it's mountains and beaches you prefer then stick with visiting the Pyrenees and Costa Brava from Barcelona.

I don't remember "natural beauty" around Sevilla. As David says, a week is a short time. The train takes 5.5 hours, plus about 1/2 hour to/from the station at each end. Flying would be marginally less time - the flight is shorter, but getting to/from the airport plus security and wait time means probably 5 hours or more total time.

Beaches are pretty but the water will be too cold for bathing.

Check your dates in comparison to festivals occuring in April as this may influence your plans and opportunities to partake in these type of activities. One week in April leads me to recommend Barcelona. Barc has a huge menu of opportunities within and newrby the city. Barc offers excellent public transportation which greatly expands your geographic range of opportunities.

Enric posts a lot on this forum, he is from barc, and recently did a series on visiting montserrat.

Given you will lose almost a day in travel time going from barc to seville, i encourage staying in barc.

Hi Thanks for the replies. Looks like it makes sense to cover places around Barcelona.

Is there any suggestion on Rail Pass which i can buy. would be taking trains each single day for 1 week, so may be 10 trips considering we would like to come back to the apartment at barcelona. May be 1 night stay so max 6 day trips . Should i book AVE in advance or any rail pass/metro pass that I can avail. We are two persons.

Here's a diagram of the AVE rail lines.

Some of the day-trips you might take could involve the AVE or other fast trains that offer advance-purchase promotional fares; Girona, Figureres and Tarragona come to mind. You can save substantial money by buying non-refundable/non-exchangeable AVE/ALVIA/etc. tickets way ahead of time. Other trips could involve regional trains, for which I don't think there are early-purchase discounts. You can explore train options on the Renfe website. It's always worth looking at the trip duration and price, because sometimes there may be a substantial price difference for a train that is not all that much faster.

I didn't use any train passes in Spain except for the senior card, so I don't know whether there's something available that would fit with your plans.

You may find buses helpful for some destinations, as well. I always check Rome2Rio.com to see whether perhaps a bus would be faster. If that looks possible, I drill down until I find the name of the bus company and--with luck--a link to the schedule. Buses are usually cheaper than last-minute tickets on the fast trains, but in that situation the bus will be quite a bit slower.

Enric created a detailed thread about visiting Montserrat from Barcelona not too long ago. You'll find it easily by reviewing the Spain forum here.

I wouldn't bother prepurchasing any tickets, and definitely not a pass. The inter urban service from Barcelona (Rodalies) even reaches beach and mountain parts of Catalunya. Maintain your flexibility - just turn up and buy your ticket each day.
http://mapabarcelona360.es/carte/image/es/mapa-rodalies-barcelona.jpg

Read this article on Spanish trains. You can save a bit on fast trains, though with relatively short trips, savings aren't huge.

Tarragona is a nice day trip (beautiful sea views for a good part of the ride) and the regional train takes 15 minutes longer than the fast train at half the price

Thanks for your replies.

With only 1 week to Spain, I'm confused between Southern Spain vs Barcelona. There are two options

Option 1:
Land in Madrid and explore Toledo, stay there for 2 days
Go to Sevilla explore nearby places such as Ronda with Sevilla as a base for next 4 days
Return to madrid for return flight

Option 2:-
Land in Madrid and explore Toledo, stay there for 2 days
Go to Barcelona, stay there for next 4 days and explore nearby places.
Finally return to madrid for return flight.
So the choice is really between Seville vs barcelona in April end. Will be too cold at Barcelona or too hot at Sevilla? This is for someone like me who has been to Europe only once (Switzerland)

You can take a look at weather averages (and record highs and lows) on the two cities' Wikipedia pages:

Seville
Barcelona

Scroll down until you find the very colorful weather chart.

At the end of April, weather is generally mild in all the places you mention. Of course, it's quirky, so you could get a heat wave or a spell of rain anywhere. And average temperatures tell you, frankly, nothing. You can find historical day-by-day weather data at wunderground.com, in the travel planning section.

Do you already have your plane tickets? If you want to see Barcelona, it makes more sense to fly open-jaw instead of backtracking by train. It can take as little as 2.5 hours on the train between Barcelona and Madrid.

Ronda is not a "nearby" place to Sevilla, it's 2.5 hours each way by bus. From Sevilla the reasonable day trips are to Jerez and Cordoba.

One can spend a week in Barcelona by itself. Focus your trip to maximize what you see and minimize the travel time between places. I'd rather see fewer places and really see them than visit a lot of places just to say I was there.