From Rick Steves books, I understand the following:
- Car works good for multiple people cost-wise, those packing slightly heavier and for visiting more rural/remote areas.
- Trains are more convenient for solo travelers, city-to-city travelers
I also have read many forum threads between drive by car vs trains. However so far I have not found much about whether winter makes a difference in this debate about drive by car or travel by train city-to-city.
We are a family of 4 - husband, wife and two teenage boys. Everyone will have a rolling carryon size luggage and possibly a small backpack (my backpack will have camera/lenses and maybe a small tripod attached).
For the more rural areas - like Andalucia's White Hall towns, etc. - we will use a car. Where I am undecided is should we use a car or train for city-to-city connected by fast trains like AVE & AVANT?
Especially given it is winter. For a family does it make more sense to drive in winter (city-to-city) or is it still more convenient to use high speed trains for city-to-city? As long as the difference in costs is not astronomical - my priority will be to whichever option is more convenient.
Please advise.
Possible reasons why winter may influence the car vs train decision:
- even if I am staying in city centre of the cities, each of us will need to haul at least one bag from train station to the hotel. This will mostly by taxi but sometimes you still need to walk a lot - and if it is chilly it may not be very convenient.
- Traffic going into/out of cities may be either lighter or heavier during Christmas / New Years
ITINERARY HELP
I am working on an itinerary for a Christmas-New Year trip in Spain. Arriving in Barcelona a few days before Christmas and flying out of Madrid a few days after New Years. Excluding arrival and departure days we have 15 day trip.
I am coming up with two possible itineraries - both having 3 days (4 nights) at the beginning in Barcelona and 2.5 days at the end in Madrid (3 nights).
Itinerary 1: By high speed trains Barcelona -> Toledo (2 nights) -> Cordoba (1 night) -> Sevilla (2 nights). By rental car Seville -> Ronda (2 nights ) -> Granada (2 nights) -> Madrid
Itinerary 2: By rental car Barcelona -> Zarazoga (1 night stop over) -> Toledo (1 nights) -> Granada (2 nights) -> Ronda (2 nights) -> Seville (2 nights) -> Cordoba (1 night) -> Madrid (drop rental car)
So itinerary 1 subscribes to the philosophy of traveling city-to-city by AVE/AVANT trains - and itinerary 2 uses the convenience of a single rental car throughout.
Which of these two would you recommend?