Spain - Andalucia travel itinerary

Would it be too crazy to take a high-speed train from Barcelona to Madrid the day of their flight home from Madrid?

I really do not recommend this. Spanish trains are reliable and the AVE high speed trains are great, but all it takes is one canceled or severely delayed train for you to miss your flight and be on the hook for purchasing a very expensive last-minute international fare. (Even if you can apply the value of your missed flight to your new flight, the cost of an international flight purchased many months ahead of time is likely to be much less than one purchased within 24h of the flight.)

To be frank, I don't really understand what Barcelona is doing in this itinerary at all, as it doesn't make particular geographic sense for a relatively short southern Spain-focused trip where your return flight is out of Madrid. Even if you don't want to spend the rest of the trip in Madrid, there are other places in Andalucía you could visit (the pueblos blancos, Cadíz, Málaga, some of the national parks), not to mention the fact you could easily add an extra night in the places you already have.

If you absolutely want to visit Barcelona, is there a way they could change their return flight to be out of Barcelona? That would make a bit more sense and save the last leg of getting back to Madrid.

should we rent a car from Madrid and drive to Cordoba or take the high speed train?

Keep in mind the drive from Madrid to Cordoba is about twice as long (time-wise) as the train. If you will be starting your trip in Córdoba and spending the first day touring that city, and you're able to pick up a rental car in Córdoba that meets your requirements, I would take the train from Madrid.

I wouldn’t make the 5 hours drive from Madrid to Córdoba on the day of arrival. I’m a huge fan of rental cars for the flexibility they afford, but with the extremely limited amount of time you have, and the fact that you want to visit larger cities, I feel a train is best for this trip. You don’t need a car in the places you’re visiting. There’s barely have enough time to become acquainted with the cities let alone take day trips.

Thank you very much for your excellent advice. I am going to rethink the Barcelona portion of the trip and spend more time in Andalucia and just hope that our 25 year old and 23 year kids will have the opportunity to return to Barcelona on their own one day. Great advice about taking the train to Andalucia and renting a car down there. They have direct flights to Madrid from Washington Dulles so prefer not to get them on a flight with changes since they will have to work the next day :(.

Ronda. I saw beautiful pictures from Ronda in the RS calendar. with just the week though, it may be a bit much to pack in, yes.

If the Madrid - Dulles flight is on United, it occasionally gets cancelled. If it does, they’ll get routed through Frankfurt. When it happened to us we landed within a couple hours of the original arrival time, but it was a short connection time in Frankfurt.

Yes, it is a United flight. We have flown through Frankfurt before (and spent many hours in the airport) but was hoping to have a direct flights. Will keep fingers crossed. Is this a frequent occurrence?

That I do not know. All I know is the direct flight is seasonal so if it isn’t full enough it can be cancelled. When it happened to us, I found out the morning of departure when I awoke to a text saying it was cancelled. I couldn’t get the number in the text message to reschedule to work, so I called the regular customer support number. Within 20 minutes we we’re rebooked.