Post Tour suggestions after Best of Spain

wannabgoin, I took the Best of Spain tour in April 2016. Great tour, wonderful sites, very diverse. Lucky you!
I spent a few nights in Barcelona before the tour, well worthwhile as there is so much to see and do there, and very little time in Barcelona during the tour.
When the tour ended, I spent an additional night in Sevilla, then two nights in Cordoba, and three nights in Jerez de la Frontera, before flying home out of Sevilla. All easily done by quite short train rides. Since my tour concluded at the very end of April, I was able to plan my schedule to include time at both the Patios Festival in Cordoba and the Caballo (Horse) Festival in Jerez. Even took a day trip to Cadiz on my final full day in Spain. All this was wonderful. I would say the highlight was lovely Cordoba, with its spectacular Mesquita, and various other places to visit and experience. Also the evenings at the Festival de Caballos in Jerez. Enjoy!

Hi, I “wanna be going”, too! LOL!

We just traveled by train and an occasional bus in Spain, so that’s not a problem. And the public buses were clean & nice, like a tour bus.

The cities we visited, besides ones already listed on your tour, were Cordoba, Nerja, Frigiliana & Malaga. One that I would like to see and was recently mentioned on the forum is Cadiz. I think that would be a wonderful city to give you more variety than seeing Cordoba or similar. It looks like it could be reached by bus, or possibly train, from Sevilla.

Have a great time!

We stayed 2 extra nights in Sevilla after this tour seeing much more of our favorite city during Best of Spain. Then we trained back to Madrid and spent one more night there before flying home. Such a great tour!

I did this tour in October 2019 (just before the axe fell on travel), it was wonderful. You'll have a great time.

The tour ended in the morning and I stayed in Seville the following night, then took the train to Cordoba and stayed two nights. The Mezquita was one of my all-time favorite sights in Europe. You could make that a stop on your way to Madrid but I think Cordoba is worth a full day, i.e. two nights. Then I took a train to Madrid for a few more days, seeing some sights the tour didn't cover. If you have just three nights before your final night in Madrid, I'd suggest one in Seville and two in Cordoba.

If you can spend time in Barcelona before the tour, I'd highly recommend that also. The tour has only one full day there, which is a busy one but Barcelona is worth more time if you can swing it. Plus it will help you get over jet lag before the tour starts.

I’ll suggest Mérida and/or Cáceres in Extremadura. The first has a number of Roman ruins and the latter’s historic center is a UNESCO world heritage site. Another option would be to stay in Trujillo and day trip to Cáceres or over to the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe.

There are absolutely no bad (or even mediocre) suggestions in this thread. You can hardly go wrong. Since you're not talking about many add-on days, I'd want to really minimize the time spent traveling from place to place and maximize productive sightseeing time. For that reason, I think some combination of extra time in Seville, a visit to Cordoba and extra time in Madrid makes the most sense. You'd probably need to pick no more than two of those options.

Hi Wanna,
We are also doing this tour in April. Based on recommendations from the forum, we are doing as suggested above: adding one night to Seville, two nights in Cordova, and two nights in Madrid. The second night in Madrid was to make sure we had enough time for testing before returning to the US, but it gives us more time to see things, since we really only have two full days there on tour.

We are also arriving two days early in Barcelona. This will be our third RS tour.

We were originally scheduled to take two other RS tours, back-to-back n this time frame, but that would have involved several counties and many different COVID requirements. We had to cancel a trip to Spain and Portugal in the fall, so this cycles back to those earlier plans., but one country, one set of rules.

I agree with the posters who recommend spending an extra night in Seville and two nights in Cordoba. There is a lot more to Cordoba than just the Mezquita. And the charm of Cordoba is in the evening after the daytrippers have left and the city and Mezquita are illuminated.

And if you have the extra time, definitely arrive in Barcelona several nights before the tour starts.

Wow, thank you all for the great feedback. I am going to plan for one extra night in Seville, two in Cordoba, and the last night in Madrid. We will be arriving in Barcelona the day before the tour, however it will be Easter Sunday. Not sure if much of anything will be open. But we do enjoy walking and will see what we can from the outside.
Larry, I looked up the Patios Festival for 2022. That is something I would love to see, unfortunately we will miss it by just a few days.

If anyone has a charming, well located place to stay in Cordoba, I'd appreciate any recommendations.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my questions.

In Cordoba I loved staying at “Mi Casa en Cordoba”. It is a large residence converted to 3 apartments of varying sizes. I stayed in the smallest: living room with small wall kitchen, bedroom, bathroom. Quiet street very near the Mesquita. The owners used to operate a ceramics business, so the decor includes many beautiful ceramic pieces. (info as of 2016) check booking.com.

Thank you Larry. Its looks like just the kind of place I would love. When I tried to check on reservations, I ran into problems. Perhaps it is another victim of the pandemic.