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Spain 9 days May 2022

I know this is early but we are putting together a trip for next mid May and will have 9 days exclusively in Spain (first time). I would very much appreciate any feedback and suggestions. We are primarily interested in art, architecture and history. We use hotels only to sleep generally ($100-150 per night for room with A/C and private bathroom) and other than tapas do not have food high on the list of priorities. We are in our mid-60s but are active and pack light (carry on only). Our tentative plan goes like this:

Day 1: arrive 6:30 am, take 4 hour train to Girona and take a general tour (I know we could spend several days there) then have early dinner and call it a night. Stay at Museu Llegendes de Girona.

Day 2: train to Figueres to see Dali Museum then round trip by taxi to Dali House in Portlligat, ( We did not want to be confined by a tour from Barcelona) then high speed train (taxi directly to Vilfant station) to Barcelona. Check into Europark Hotel

Day 3, 4, 5 in Barcelona (relaxing pace- Sagrada Familia, Picasso, walking tours) leave day 5 evening by high speed train for Madrid, arrive and check into Sleep'N Atocha.

Days 6,7,8 ,9 Madrid: walking/bike tours, museums, day trip to Toledo (weekday)

Day 10 leave Madrid around noon

We have considered a long day trip from Madrid to see the mosque-cathedral of Cordoba but that may have to wait for another trip centered in the south.

Thank you very much in advance, always appreciate advice from this forum!!

Posted by
7294 posts

Two questions here:
- is it convenient for you to fly into Barcelona and out of Madrid? You would save a lot of time on day 1.
- is your interest in Salvador Dalí so strong as to warrant what will be a costly and time-consuming excursion? I would rather spend that day in Gerona, or add a day to Barcelona and day trip to Montserrat. But if you are Dalí-fans, then go ahead!

And definitely don't attempt a day trip from Madrid to Córdoba. Segovia would be more doable, but you are already planning Toledo and only have time for one day trip, because as art lovers you will need three full days in Madrid.

Posted by
17 posts

To add to Balso's comment above, if you are interested in Dali but want to skip the detour, I stumbled onto a Dali museum in Barcelona a few years ago during my one visit to that fun city. Fond memory of seeing his series of etchings celebrating the great inventions and doing a double-take at the catalytic cracker. I am not sure how many other people interested in Dali would know off the top of their heads what that device does.

Another excursion I would recommend is to take a day trip from Madrid to see El Escorial. The tour guide on the Spain trip mentioned above recommended it for those of us staying an extra day. Two of us took the recommendation and were very impressed with the palace of the Spanish kings from the days when Spain was a great power. The Rick Steves guidbook gave directions on catching the bus from Madrid that were perfect for getting us there. If you are Catholic, they do still celebrate mass in the chapel there, so if you time it better than I did on a Sunday, you can probably join the congregation.

Posted by
27951 posts

The art museum in Girona is nice and of a manageable size, but I loved just walking around the large historic district. There are two historic churches as well as the walkable wall.

The jewelry collection covered by the Dali Theatre-Museum ticket is very near the latter and worth the time; 30 minutes or so should do it even if you want to try to take some pictures. The Theatre-Museum was larger than I expected and took more time than I had anticipated, partly because I had to adjust my path through the (multi-floor) museum due to the arrival of a French bus tour. I'd advise not waiting until you arrive at the museum to buy your ticket. I don't think they sell out really early, but even before COVID restrictions, individual time-slots were sometimes full. With your tight schedule you wouldn't want to be told you had to return in a couple of hours. Figueres is not that interesting a place to kill time, I don't think. However, I was told one can see the jewelry collection before the Theatre-Museum entry time, so that provides some flexibility.

It sounds as if you probably won't have time for Cadaques on your jaunt to Port Lligat, which is a shame. It's a beautiful white-cube former fishing village with bougainvillea everywhere. Perhaps your driver can give you a bit of a look at the town. The road between Figueres and Cadaques is lovely, incidentally.

In Barcelona I especially liked the Barri Gotic walking tour offered by the tourist office. The group was a lot smaller than the "free" tour groups I saw. The modernism and Picasso tours were also interesting. The Picasso tour is a way around the need to book your own tickets to the Picasso Museum. We got to the museum in the late afternoon and it was still utterly mobbed--think those scenes from classic movies showing cocktail parties in Manhattan apartments.

You can expect nearly all the Gaudi sites to be equally overrun. He wasn't the only fabulous architect working in Barcelona during the Art Nouveau period. There are two great sights by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. Be sure to include a visit to the Sant Pau modernista site where you can wander peacefully from building to building and be almost alone. The audio guide relieves you of the need to try to schedule a visit to coincide with the rare English-language tour. The tour of the richly decorated Palau de la Musica Catalana is a good way to see that building, also by Domènech i Montaner, but you could also buy tickets to a performance there.

The modernism tour offered by the T.O. included a brief stop at the commercially-run modernism museum in the Eixample. I'd have liked to have more than 15 minutes there, but it's hard to argue with a free look.

The MNAC on Montjuic was a 5-hour art museum for me. In addition to the expected paintings and sculptures there's a modernism collection (furniture, jewelry and decorative arts) and an impressive set of medieval frescoes from churches in the Pyrenees. The Miro Museum, also on Montjuic, is a pleasure to visit after the mob scene at the Picasso Museum. There are of course many other museums in Barcelona.

I spent several nights in Toledo and don't know how well it would work for a day-trip, but I got great value out of the little bracelet that provides entry to a bunch of secondary sights of historical and architectural interest. Many of them had bilingual tours offered twice a day, which I found interesting. It wasn't easy finding my way from place to place to fit with the scheduled tours, but I have since discovered the great value of the You Are Here dot on Google Maps. Toledo has a huge, somewhat hilly, historic district, so you wouldn't go wrong by taking a do-it-yourself approach there and just stopping in at a few places suggested by your guide book.

I wouldn't try to cram Cordoba into this schedule. There's a lot more to see there than just the Mezquita.