Schedule to the day ... or remain flexible? ==>> P.S.

You realize this is like asking What should I have for dinner each night? No one knows your travel style except you.

We still travel pretty loose and that is a little contrary to many on this site. We always have reservation for the first couple of nights and last night or so if we know our return city and date. And often we don't have a return flight booked either but it works for us since we are retire and rarely have to be anywhere at a set time. We use the hotels apps (Hoteltonight is our big one) and the TIs in the cities we are visiting. We book our hotels one to two nights ahead and have not slept in the train station yet. We find it easy to move without reservation. The exception is big holiday times but that is infrequent. I don't see anything wrong with what you are proposing. Just be flexible.

Our answers will be reflecting our personalities, so take that into account. I don’t like to spend time while I am on vacation needing to stop & research possible activities or to be trying to find a place to stay. It just feels like wasted time that I could be out enjoying, instead.

On the other hand, it could be fun to see where the wind takes you!

I feel like your comment has already decided which way this year’s trip should go, and yes, it does seem like there’s a lot of people traveling this year! “But now, perusing the lodging sites and seeing how (little) availability there is, I am having second thoughts. I don't want to spend half my time scrambling to find lodging and then having to fit my travels around that.”

We always say we are going to "keep things open" and "play it loose," and then the Type A side of my brain kicks in and we start making bookings and plans. As others have said, it is important to know your own style and preferences, and be true to yourself.

What I will add is that even though we are planners, we have switched to reservations and plans that are cancellable -- a lesson we learned when COVID hit and wiped our plans clean off the map. Obviously nothing can be 100%, but do factor that into your advanced planning. Most booking sites have a toggle or filter for cancellable reservations.

We generally have a rental car so we can remain flexible. We do make hotel reservations, but only list places we’d like to see while en route to, or at, a location. How one feels and weather can play havoc on strict/fixed itineraries. As an example, on our last trip to Spain we visited some places that didn’t take as long to see as we thought they would so we added a few additional sights. On another day we decided we’d seen enough castles and monasteries so dropped a couple of those and added a small town further away.

Since you pretty much only mention regions it’s difficult to know what exactly you’re thinking with regard to places you want to visit. I’d drop France completely and stick with Spain. I could spend five weeks in any two of the regions you mentioned and not see all they have to offer. Decades ago I would just gotten in the car and driven someplace with only a vague idea of where I wanted to stay, but with some idea of things I wanted to see. Now we spend more time in a smaller area.

We spent a month in Spain last fall. I think you need to make reservations for any of the popular (tourist AND local) places as we found places filling up 6 months before our trip. Even then we had an apartment cancel 2 weeks before departure, causing a last minute scramble. Resulted in a good place but much further out than preferred. We are slow travelers, so we schedule for our 'must sees' and 'maybe sees' and then add a night or 2. Those extra days have allowed us to do things and visit places we didn't know enough about to schedule. Also, allows for less hectic days.

5 weeks seems like a lot, but Spain is a big country! You may want to add some more time to your initial stops. These are my recommend number of nights to do these regions justice:

Madrid + La Mancha environs (8 nights)
Extremadura (10 nights)
Castilla Leon (10 nights)
Aragon (10 nights)
Barcelona + Catalonia environs (12 nights)

As you see 3 weeks is not enough to see what you already have planned without rushing. Before anything, I'd use those 2 weeks to pad your original plan.

I am guessing Mar 1 to 23 has already been planned and booked, making it difficult to alter and pad extra days on already booked stays.

Whether you stay in Spain or or go to France makes no difference, imo. You will still have to deal with the same issues of availability, last minute booking, etc.

It has probably been more than 30 years since I winged it on a trip. Marriage made me less adventurous, and I don't want to piss off my spouse. And with the internet, like almost everybody else, we tend to research, plan and book everything online usually almost down to the minute. Gone are the days when I would walk into the train station with a Eurail pass and just decide that minute which train was available on the arrival board and where to go next.

You have just about a month before Mar 23. I think that most big rail discounts have already passed or sold out already, so you are not going to save a huge bundle by advance booking at this late stage. And it may be worth it to pay a few Euros more and keep the flexibility for your last 2 weeks. Who knows? After 3 weeks, you may be sick of tapas and want some French cuisine. Or, maybe you meet some new friends who invite you to follow them to Valencia to go sailing.

It is still low season, so probably not everything will sell out in early April. If you look last minute, you should probably be able to find some train or some hotel, somewhere. When I backpacked to Venice in June '83, upon arrival, the tourist office could not find one (affordable?) hotel in the whole city for me. I just hopped back on the next train and stayed in Padua, and commuted back and forth to Venice.

So, I say keep things open and take advantage of the situation you are in. Embrace the unknown. You are unlikely to have (or should I say, take) the chance again in the future.

We are in Spain now - arrived February 9 and will be here until April 9. We booked our main train trips about six weeks in advance and got an average 30% discount. I also booked all our hotels in advance and got some good winter booking discounts - 20-25%.

Our hotels have all been booked as refundable so we can change if we choose to. I decided to book everything after hearing about how popular holidaying is in Europe is at the moment. While nothing has been crowded so far, there was standing room only for some people on the train back from Montserrat to Barcelona yesterday.

If your itinerary is off-the-beaten path to towns few have heard of— you will probably be OK winging it.
By all indications, however, this year is going to be a banner year for travel in Europe . Many North Americans who hesitated to go last year are going this year. I have a friend who has never been to Europe his entire life and just returned last week after visiting France and Italy with his girlfriend for two weeks. Japanese and Chinese globetrotters who have not been able to travel internationally the last 2+ years are going to be traveling this year. And then there are Europeans themselves who want to get out there. This all adds up to a huge increase in the numbers of travelers swamping Europe in 2023.

I’ve not heard of people saving either money or time by deferring making decisions on where they’ll stay or which flights and trains they will take because—in today’s world— flights, train tix and accommodations just get more expensive the closer it gets to travel day.
You can roll the dice and wing it for your trip. But, for this year anyway, I’ll have every destination that’s likely to be deluged by daytrippers reserved well in advance.

Just a comment on the above: if it's off the beaten path and few have heard if it, chances are lodging offerings are limited.

So true, Bets!

You’re skipping Andalusia?Sevilla, Granada and Cordoba?

You should schedule to the day.

There are certain advantages to writing an approximate day-by-day itinerary, buying train (or long-distance bus) tickets in advance, and making hotel reservations in advance.

Are you going to any popular sites (Royal palace in Madrid, Prado or Thysseun-Bornemisza museums in Madrid; Alcazars in Andalucia, and so on) that may technically allow you to buy tickets at the last minute but which it would be better to buy tickets in advance for?

5 weeks could be enough for both Spain and France. Or you could spend all your time in Spain. Can you write a supposed list of places you want to see in Spain and then we'll see if you have enough for 5 weeks or if you would be better off going France too??

I only spent 13 nights in Spain but that is because my budget is tight and I can't or don't want to afford to take 5 weeks off of work even if I could get permission to take that much time off.

Tickets for the fastest trains on the routes between major cities in Spain are specific to the departure date and time you have chosen; when you buy the ticket, you'll get an assigned seat. Those trains often have demand-sensitive pricing. When tickets initially go on sale, some are offered at deep discounts (and often are non-refundable--always check the fare rules for the ticket you are considering). As others buy tickets on those trains, the cheapest tickets get snapped up and only more expensive tickets remain. You can, and should, read about how Spanish trains work here: seat61.com info on trains in Spain. You can see dynamic pricing in action by looking at ticket costs between Barcelona and Madrid (or Valencia-Madrid, etc.) for today and tomorrow vs. for mid-April on www.renfe.com/es/en/.

Not all trains follow that pricing pattern, but the ones that do not, tend to be slower between major cities. I see that there's not much variation in train travel times between Madrid and Caceres, just as one example; the fastest trains don't travel that route. It will be useful to you to identify which of your travel segments will possibly involve trains whose fares will escalate; that way you'll be well positioned to buy those tickets as soon as you are confident of your travel plans. Always click on each fare available for your train and read the cancellation/refund rules.

In addition to the potential for saving money, Spain is a country where the fast trains between major cities do sometimes sell out. You'll see "Full Train" labels when that happens. Unlike in most other European countries, this is not rare. It's not a concern on the slower trains that don't require seat reservations; there's no limit on how many tickets are sold for those.

The Renfe website doesn't always deal well with routes that are not straightforward. It sometimes returns no results for non-direct routes that required the passenger to travel from a provincial city into a hub like Madrid and then back out again. It is then necessary for the passenger to buy the ticket in two segments. If both your origin and destination have train service, there will obviously be a way to take trains between them. There might be an ugly layover somewhere, the trip might take a very long time because of the need to travel into Madrid and back out again, and you will pay for all those extra miles, but the trip will be possible. (In these situations it's smart to see whether there's a more-direct bus option.) Third-party resellers like TheTrainline.com usually handle that sort of situation better, but you'll often pay a bit more either in higher fares or in the form of a ticketing fee, or both.

The pricing of bus tickets doesn't seem to be quite as dynamic as what you'll see (if you look) for train tickets, but bus fares can also escalate as the travel date approaches, and buses can also sell out. It is not a safe assumption that you can always walk into the bus station (or go online) 15 minutes before departure time and get a ticket on the bus you want to take.

Note that even in very small bus stations they stop selling tickets X minutes (maybe 5 minutes? I'm not sure) before departure time. Don't cut it too close!