Route Help Barcelona to Faro via S. Spain

guyotdeb - Here is a possible route using the rail system from Barcelona to the Andalusia region and to Faro.

Fly into Barcelona -

Using Rail you can plot your course like this:

Barcelona - 3 days (Day trip to Montserrat)

Madrid - 2 Days

Granada - 2 Days

Seville - 3 Days (Day trip to Jerez)

Fly from Seville to Faro on Day 10

Or

You can also take the bus from Seville to Faro which is cheaper.

https://www.alsa.com/en/web/bus/coach/seville-faro

Barcelona can easily fill 3 days without any day trips.

I would only head to Granada if you can get tickets for the Alhambra, which you may struggle to get at this late stage. Otherwise, head to Madrid.

There are no flights from Seville to Faro. Take the bus.

Seville itself deserves 3 full days. Cadiz and Jerez are two day trips possible from Seville.

Don’t be tempted to cover too much ground, as moving locations will cost you half a day.

The risk here is that you'll end up with not much more than a day in a series of cities that really need much more time. Landing in Barcelona means your first day there may be sleep-deprived and jetlagged, thus not really usable for more than wandering around aimlessly as you try to stay awake. So I'd want 4 nights there. If you have no interest in the modernista architecture (unlikely since you have chosen to fly into Barcelona), I guess you could go with just 3 nights in the city since you have to cover the full length of Spain. However, there is a lot to do in Barcelona (many very good museums, for example), and managing a short trip there is especially challenging since so many of its most popular sights require pre-purchased, timed tickets. It isn't easy to figure out how to fit together a bunch of timed visits, because you don't know how much time you'll want at each stop or how long it will take to move between them.

In any case, on a short visit like this to Barcelona, I wouldn't plan a trip to Montserrat. If you decide after arrival that you want to spend time there, just go to the station beneath Placa d'Espanya and buy the round-trip combo ticket there; no reason to buy in advance. You'll need to decide which of the two transportation options you prefer for the second leg of the trip; just read about those ahead of time and you're good to go.

With the amount of time you have, and the time you're going to spend just moving from place to place, I'd limit myself to three bases in Spain. (Actually, I'd do two, but I'm odd.) Barcelona and Seville are obvious. Seville is a large city that needs at least 3 nights (4 would be better). The third stop could be Granada if you can get Alhambra tickets that include the Nasrid Palaces. Ask your hotel; if no luck there, you might snag slots on a tour.

If you can't get tickets to the Alhambra, consider Madrid (great side-trips possible to places like Toledo and Segovia if you don't need a lot of time for the art museums) or Cordoba. While Cordoba can be a day-trip from Seville (in which case add a day to Seville), it is really lovely to be able to spend 2 or 3 nights there.

Or do what I would do and just split your time between Barcelona and Seville. If the bustling city of Barcelona begins to get to you, head to Girona, a place I've visited twice (haven't gotten to Montserrat even once yet). From Seville the small town of Carmona makes a nice side-trip after you've covered Cordoba.

I've just checked the list of flight destinations from Faro (see the airport's Wikipedia page). It appears the only two options for flights from Spain are Barcelona and Madrid, and they are seasonal. I don't know whether your trip falls within that season, but you can check potential flight dates on skyscanner.com if you think you might want to fly from Madrid to Faro. Some flights operate only a few days a week.

Ground connections between Spain and Portugal are few and not speedy. That's why we tend to discourage short trips that combine the two countries. At least, heading to Faro, you do have a bus option from Seville. In fact, you have multiple bus options from Seville. There appear to be four different companies offering service. You can drill down on Rome2Rio.com to find links to the websites of those bus companies. Don't trust the high-level data (fare, travel time, frequency) you see on the Rome2Rio website itself. Those often seem to be works of fiction.

Seville has two major bus stations. Be sure you know which one your bus departs from!

I know Americans tend to read the word, "bus", and go "ewww". European inter-city buses are very nice. Many have Wi-Fi. Don't fear the bus. Don't be tempted to rent a car to avoid the bus; the extra fee for renting in Spain and dropping the car in Portugal would probably be very high (most likely many hundreds of euros).

Thank you everyone- all your input is most helpful!
As a side question- would anyone suggest we change direction and forgo the south of Spain for France instead, maybe Northern Spain into France??? Our only firm is the Oct 1 date to arrive in Faro- the rest is flex.
Would we be better flying into Faro from France?
Any thoughts?

I don't know about the flight schedules from France. You can go to the Wikipedia page for the Faro airport and find a table listing all the destinations to which direct flights are available; I'd expect inbound flights to be available from the same places. That's your universe of easy departure points. The actual flight schedules can be found on skyscanner.com.

It could still be quite hot in Andalucía in September; typically, southern France wouldn't be quite so scorching, so that's a plus. It's an interesting area. There are also lots of interesting places in Catalunya (start with Girona!) and in the Basque Country of Spain. The Basque Country tends to be coolish and damp even in mid-summer. All those areas are visitable by public transportation; I have done it. In France, however, unless you just run up the coast and through the immediately adjoining territory (Collioure, Perpignan, Narbonne, Sete, Montpellier, etc.), a car will much simplify your logistics. It would take some time to put together a public-transportation-based itinerary that went very far afield from the coast in southern France, and you're getting a bit short on time. Not saying it can't be done by motivated travelers.

There's decent public transportation within the Spanish Basque Country; I'm less familiar with the French Basque territory, having just parked myself in Bayonne and taken a couple of side-trips. Definitely Bayonne, Biarritz and and St-Jean-de-Luz are readily accessible.

Public transportation crossing points between the two countries are mainly near the east coast (Cerbere/Port Bou), through the Pyrenees (Latour-de-Carol to Foix), and near the west coast from (San Sebastian/Hondarribia/Irun to Hendaye/St-Jean-de-Luz/Biarritz/Bayonne).