Rick’s Basque tour plus Barcelona and Madrid

Plenty of daily connections by bus, train or plane between Barcelona and Madrid with Bilbao. To get to Bayonne, you can either fly (much fewer connections than to Bilbao, it´s a tiny airport), bus or train to Donostia-San Sebastian and then a bus to Bayonne/Baiona.

We recently flew to Lyon after our Basque tour. We had to change planes in Madrid. The flight from Bilbao to Madrid was easy, the Bilbao airport was easy to find our way around in, and the airport bus goes from the center of town straight to the airport, every 20 minutes are so. This is very doable.

After the (excellent!) Basque tour, I took the train from Bilbao to Madrid for a few days before flying home from Madrid. It would be easy enough to travel by train from Madrid to Barcelona and hopefully fly home from there.

I would check connections and prices for your best choices for flying to and flying from to decide how to arrange order.

And, again, one point in favor of buses instead of trains, which seem to be the favorite means of transport by many US visitors. But trust me that bus is also an excellent option (cheap, frequent, modern, clean, fully equipped, on time...)

Thanks everyone, you’ve been so kind and thoughtful with your very helpful replies. It looks like it’s quite doable.

We did the best of Spain tour this October, and really enjoyed it! Hence our desire to get back to a couple of the cities. I felt I got to know Barcelona a bit ( we arrived a couple of days early, so that helped) and really enjoyed its vibe, but I really didn’t get a feel for Madrid, Just the big attractions, not the city really. If anyone cares to comment, I’d be interested in hearing if people found Madrid as a city to be enjoyable to explore for a 2 or 3 days. I’d want to go back to the Prado, but no palaces. And then we’d take the train for 2 or 3 days in Barcelona before heading for the tour.

Since you're interested in art, you might like to explore the new Royal Collections Gallery: https://www.patrimonionacional.es/en/node/8086. That's on my list for my next trip to Madrid.

I was able to see the Monasterio de las Descalzas Reales on my 2016 trip, but only with a Spanish-language tour. I don't really speak Spanish, but getting an English tour if you were a solo traveler was very difficult. They've changed the entry procedures now; you can buy a ticket online in advance. Tickets are selling out ahead of time, so buy early. Tours are only in Spanish, but it appears there's an audio guide of some sort, though I couldn't get the link to work just now. This is a convent that housed many wealthy women, so the art is really impressive. Rick has a write-up about it in his guidebook. If the audio guide isn't working, you will want to have read that section of the guidebook more than once before your visit. (I hadn't, and I regretted it.) https://tickets.patrimonionacional.es/en-GB/informacion-recinto/8/monasterio-descalzas

After our Barcelona/Madrid tour some years ago, we spent an extra 8 days in Madrid (not counting a three day interlude in there to visit Granada!) We had no trouble filling the time in Madrid. There is so much to see, and the city is fun to just walk around in.