Spain in 11 days, driving

Sorry, I realize I inadvertently wrote "11 days" in the subject line above but the trip will be a total of 14.

I also meant to ask if this is a smarter way to do it with a car rental:

First night in Madrid and then the AVE to Seville for 4-5 nights.

On day 4, rent a car in Seville (again, where is the best place to rent a car - train station, etc?) and go to Ronda/Arcos and back to Seville, day 5 day trip to Cordoba and back to Seville overnight, and then head to Granada.

Is it expensive in Spain to do a one-way rental? (Pickup in Seville and drop in Madrid?)

I hope I'm making sense with all of this.

I've never rented a car in Europe and am not sure just how awful the parking will be. The common advice is to rent a car for the pueblos blancos, so you won't be doing anything unusual there. In addition, since the fast rail line is not completed (as of now) all the way to Granada, you won't be giving up super-fast train options for all parts of your itinerary, just some of them.

I'm wondering about your luggage comment, though; just how much do you plan to take? Small rental cars of the type two people might choose won't necessarily have enough luggage space to hide all of your bags if you're traveling heavy, and theft from cars parked at touristy spots has been an issue in Spain for decades (and not just in Spain). It's critical that all your belongs be hidden in the trunk before you reach your parking spot.

Here's a comparison of ViaMichelin's probably-optimistic driving times vs. the train times from renfe.com. The driving times don't include: time at the rental-car counter (may be considerably longer than in the US), getting lost, looking for parking, traffic tie-ups and stopping for food (you can eat on the train) or toilets (also available on the train).

Madrid-Cordoba: 4 hr. 17 min. (fast train as little as 1 hr. 40 min.)
Cordoba-Seville: 2 hr. (fast trains max. 45 min.)
Seville-Granada: 3 hr. 4 min. (fast train + bus combo 3 hr. 27 min.)
Granada-Toledo: 3 hr. 52 min. (fast train + bus combo 5 hr. 23 min. or substantially more; requires going to Madrid & doubling back)
Toledo-Madrid: 1 hr. 8 min. (fast train 33 min.)

ViaMichelin flags especially scenic roads with green, though you'll probably have to zoom in to see that. Worth checking, especially for your drive through the pueblos blancos. (Don't skip Ronda; larger but especially dramatic.)

I see that VM's fastest route from Madrid to Cordoba takes you rather near Ubeda and Baeza. They are said to be picturesque and untouristy places. I intend to check them out on my next trip to Andalucía. With a car, you'd have the option of deviating from the direct route and seeing one or both of them. I haven't researched them so don't know whether something like a 2-hour stop would be worthwhile. VM says stopping in Ubeda would add 1 hr. 20 min. to the Madrid-Cordoba drive.

Alternatively, you could do two nights in Cordoba and hit Baeza/Ubeda on a day trip if you don't mind the extra driving time. Take the night from Seville. I think you have plenty of time there. Having traipsed through a lot of pretty small towns elsewhere, I think the cute little white towns may get a bit repetitive after 1-1/2 or 2 days. If you plan to do something like take long hikes, that's a different story.

Incidentally, Spanish buses are quite comfortable, and your larger pieces of luggage are stowed in the hold underneath, so you don't have to handle them much. Buses are slower than trains when moving between major destinations, of course.

Edited to add: I meant to note that going as far as Seville by train (not including the possible Baeza/Ubeda detour) looks like it would be a good alternative. Doubling back to Cordoba by train is totally doable; it would be slower and more annoying by car

The conventional wisdom here is that you can usually drop a car within the same country for little additional cost, but you cannot be sure until you check for your specific dates and places. See what the consolidators AutoEurope, Kemwel and Gemut offer.

If you arrive in Madrid in the morning or early afternoon, you might as well take the train to Cordoba and spend 2 nights there. Then train to Sevilla. Rent a car when you leave Sevilla. If you want to visit Italica while you're there, do it with the car. Then drive through the hills, visiting the pueblos blancos and spend 2 nights in Ronda, maybe 1 in another hill town. Drive to Granada and drop the car. Take the train to Madrid's Atocha station where you can store most of your luggage in a locker and then take the commuter train to Toledo.

If you want to stay in the old city centers, you may end up schlepping your luggage along cobblestone streets from parking to your hotel - or pay premium prices for hotels that have parking. It's easier to take taxis (they aren't expensive) to/from the station/hotel. The train stations are modern and easy to get through with normal wheeled luggage. The trains, except for those to Granada, are superfast and even without traffic delays, they are much faster than cars.

I haven't read all of the previous replies, but having just come from Spain with thoughts of returning and doing a drive trip, I had driving on my mind.
1. You are legally required to have an international drivers certificate...just saying
2. If you have never driven in Europe or outside North America, it will be a new experience. Buy the best auto insurance you can get (there are a lot of dings on cars).
3. From other reads, it seems very affordable to do one way drives (not returning a car at the same spot).
4. Toledo is by far the narrowest streets I saw in any of these cities and the hills are terrible. I would do my best to avoid a car in town.
5. My personal plan was to consider hotels on the city edges where I can park for the duration and bus in for the day. Or consider car parks on the outskirts and bus into a hotel in the centre. Granada is another place where the streets deteriorate quite quickly so others do the park/stay a little further out and bus in for the day. One cannot be totally comfortable of the security of an open parking lot, so I would do a closed one with hotel - if possible.
6. Some of these places are pretty small, so doing this doesn't leave you out of the atmosphere. There is a nice posada just across the river from Toledo - that I think Rick stays in when he is there.
7. Other than Toledo, there are many main boulevards, so if you are strategic on where you stay, you can get pretty close to the tourist core without having to be right in it.
8. I don't know the White Towns, but if they are anything like Toledo - be advised.

Acraven, thank you SO much for that information!

I will show him the travel times - driving/vs trains and buses.

As far as luggage, we don't travel with huge bags but I have indeed heard about the need to "hide" the luggage so the car doesn't get broken into.

Perhaps it's best to do most of our traveling via the trains/buses and rent a car in Seville to go see the pueblos blancos. This way parking/tolls, etc. isn't an issue for the majority of the trip?

Chani and Maria -

Great advice. I definitely need to convince him that we do NOT need a car for the most part. We have indeed driven in many countries around the world but in my opinion, the trains/buses seem to be a much better option for this trip. A car rental in Seville to go out and explore for a day trip or two seems much more reasonable.

I can’t speak to all the locations you mention, but I do have recent driving experience in Seville, Granada, Toledo and the white towns. I would caution you that you will pay a very large fee to park in lots surrounding the old towns of Toledo and Seville. In Granada, we parked in the lots at the Alhambra and took the bus to the inner city. We left our car at the Alhambra lot for two days with no problem and not a huge parking fee. The streets in the inner cities of Seville and Toledo are VERY narrow, many are one way, and all are poorly marked. I would not consider driving in either city. As for the hill towns, I drove without problem to Arcos, but then left my car parked for free on a side street during our stay. There is a larger pay lot in front of the cathedral but it is expensive nd was full pretty much all the time.

By either car or train, we recommend packing light in a carry-on sized bag that you can handle yourself. You may be "schlepping" it one way or the other and neither one of you should be burdened to handle both bags. Rick's advice is not so much about carrying a bag onto a plane as it is about handling it on and off trains, in stations, in lodgings without elevators, and even from a parking lot to your hotel. Have you booked places that you know have parking and elevators? Many historic city centers have driving restrictions. Spain has a lot of newer, faster train sets that also pull up more level with the train platform than do traditional trains.

Rick's Spain book has tips for drivers at the start and end of most chapters. But in Barcelona, for instance, it just says, "don't do it," while the Granada chapter points you toward parking lots on the edge of town and reminds you to have your hotel register your car if driving further in.

May I offer a plan for a compromise between car & train ...

Day
1. Fly in to Madrid (1N)
2. Train to Cordoba (1N) ... Visit Mezquita
3. Pick up car ... Drive to Granada (2N)
4. Visit Alhambra
5. Drive to Ronda (2N)
6. Day by car to pueblos blancos
7. Drive via Arcos de la Frontera to Seville (4N) ... Return car
8. Seville
9. Day by train to Jerez or Cadiz
10. Seville
11. Train (via Madrid) to Toledo (2N)
12. Toledo
13. Train to Madrid (1N)
14. DEPART Madrid

Four days by car - 3, 5, 6, 7.
Four days by train - 2, 9, 11, 13.

Thank you both! Yes, I do plan to buy Rick's book for sure and packing light is important to us as my husband recently had two back surgeries and we don't want to go through that again.

I like that alternate itinerary as well. I wasn't sure if spending a night in Ronda was recommended but I don't want to rush through there either and would like to have time to see some of the pueblos blancos so thank you for the suggestion. Much appreciated!

Now I need some guidance on another topic with this trip and if I should just post this in a separate post, please don't hesitate to let me know, but here goes in the meantime:

Yesterday I looked up information on the Spain Train Pass here on Rick's site and I was also searching for car rental prices to compare (in hopes of showing my husband that renting a car is much more expensive and a pain in the butt in the long run).

I'm so confused about the trains and I definitely need help on this. I haven't taken the trains in Europe in years, so I readily admit that I am completely ignorant about the fares, etc .

The car rental, for a compact car, for 13 days total, is showing approximately $569. That's in addition, of course, to gas, tolls, parking.

I followed Rick's advice calculating the cost for point-to-point train tickets and I came up with something like $235 per person for our initial itinerary more or less. My understanding is those provide an automatic seat reservation but please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

My question on that part is, do I wait until I am at each train station to purchase a ticket then or is that not a wise thing to do as we risk the trains being full?

The Spain Pass has me totally confused. I initially tried looking it up on the Renfe site but only see options for train + hotel, train + leisure, hoteles, etc., so I don't really know where to start there. I know that timetables aren't available for next May yet, but I couldn't really decipher the site at all to get a ball park figure on the cost for a Pass.

I realize that, with the purchase of a Spain Pass, I would still need to purchase reservations on most of the legs.

To get an approximate cost of the Pass (on Rick's site), as well as an idea of reservation costs, I changed the dates to this coming January, figuring that the timetable is already active for that time period.

What I came up with is $414 per person for the Pass ( I had put in an 8-day pass for now) and then an additional $12-$17 per person, per leg, for seat reservations? Does that sound right? It seems more expensive than I anticipated, but again, I'm ignorant on this part. That would be $1,000 for the two of us for the trains?

If this is indeed the cost, what is the best way to purchase the tickets? Should I purchase the Pass and then once we have our itinerary pretty much set in stone, should I go online before leaving home, and make all of my reservations? Or is it an option to purchase the Pass and then make reservations on day of travel at each station?

Any advice or direction is welcome!

Forget train passes. The value of train is to buy them about 60 days ahead of travel and routes can save you as much as 60%. Some are so short and frequent, these can be bought shortly before travel with no discounts. However, like planes and hotels, there is dynamic pricing. This article may help some,
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187514-c80518/Madrid:Spain:Buying.Renfe.Tickets.Online.html
and also read seat61.com which is sort of the bible for European train travel.
I wanted to mention that I am not sure I can agree with the above combined schedule. I wouldn't bother driving between Cordoba and Granada unless the reasoning was due the fact that the high speed line to Granada is still under construction. Even then, I would recommend the train. What happens when purchasing train tickets to Granada is that at Antequerra, Renfe moves you to a bus for the final leg. All purchases and activities are via Renfe and should be treated as if all are trains. For example, you are dropped off at Granada's train station. The ticket is a Renfe train ticket. Hopefully by May it will be running. I saw a lot of beautiful prepared track and bridges while on the bus from Granada to Sevilla.
I will admit that if one is not used to public transport, it can all seem confusing. I did think Rick's train information was good (when I looked a few years ago), but I would not use it as my principal train reference. His details of how to get to places (like Segovia from Madrid) works, but for planning, I go to on the ground resources like TripAdvisor. They use trains constantly. Even Seat61 hasn't updated details for a couple of years, so please consider a mix of types of information.
The other thing to just keep in mind is that Renfe website changes schedules in December, so at this particular time, not all details may be loaded into the system.

I should mention, that I was more than satisfied with standard seating. At times I was given the option to pick my own seats, and when available, I always chose the 'quiet car'. Occasionally I picked a level of ticket that allowed changes, but I couldn't think of many reasons to not stick to the schedule I had. Day trip to Segovia I booked that day as that was more weather dependent.

I took a look at fares on renfe.com so you have a basis for comparison to the cost of a rail pass. I used David's proposed routing.

I noted fares for tomorrow (November 23) and for February 25 (i.e., buying about 90 days in advance); these are rounded to the nearest euro and are one-way unless otherwise noted. May 2018 fares will probably not be available for a while.

I ignored itineraries that were markedly slower than others offered on the same day. Fares for express trains can vary even on a single day; some departures are just more popular than others, and the lower-priced tickets get snapped up more quickly. A fairly narrow difference between the November and February fares may be deceptive; the good fares available for tomorrow might be at times you do not want, whereas the low February fares may be more widely available.

Madrid-Cordoba: Nov €50-106, Feb €33-72
Cordoba-Granada: Nov €37-44, Feb €37
Granada-Ronda: Fare does not change. €20
Ronda-Seville: Fare for the MD train (almost as fast as the AVANT-MD) does not change. €21
Seville-Jerez Round Trip: Nov €9-16, Feb €12-16 (is this a price change?)
Seville-Cadiz Round Trip: Nov €13-19, Feb €14-19 (price change?)
Seville-Toledo: Nov €66-114, Feb €54-89
Toledo-Madrid Round Trip: Fare does not change. €10

For some short-distance trains the round-trip fare is lower than the one-way fare. Always check for that. This is the case for Seville-Jerez, Seville-Cadiz and Madrid-Toledo.

I think the trip from Seville to Toledo requires two separate tickets. One is an AVE ticket from Seville to Madrid, whose price tends to rise as you get closer to the travel date. The other is an AVANT ticket from Madrid down to Toledo, whose price is always the same. Since you must return to Madrid later, and the Madrid-Toledo round-trip is one of those that is cheaper than a one-way fare (€10 RT vs. €13 OW), I think you would do best to buy an AVE ticket for Seville-Madrid and a separate round-trip ticket Madrid-Toledo-Madrid. However, I am not sure what would happen to your Madrid-Toledo ticket if the AVE arrived in Madrid late.

Ok, thanks for explaining Maria. I really appreciate it. I was on the loco2 page for Spain this afternoon and was able to understand much more about the tickets. That Renfe site has me completely perplexed!

I did read that the route to Granada still requires the train and bus but as you said, that may change by May.

So, if I'm understanding correctly, you wouldn't suggest buying the Spain Pass but rather, making reservations for the longer legs 60 days out, and just purchasing point-to-point tickets? I'm not too concerned about my seat and I'm fine with 2nd class, as long as we are able to purchase tickets.

Yes, Rick's tips and information have been great (I LOVE his shows!), and I will head over to TripAdvisor. I agree, they are always a good resource as well, and I'm so glad you told me about Seat61.

I want to add, I have read so many posts on this site and I'm always delighted to read how helpful everyone is! It's so nice to read all the comments. I've found the information from all of you to be invaluable so thank you all so very much for always sharing your insight and thoughts :-)

Pretty much any train to Toledo frommorher than Madrid is easier purchased separate 'legs'. Renfe doesn't seem to compute transfers well. Renfe pridesmitself on runni gnon time, and if delayed, you can request refunds. Your ticket spells out the refund policies dependent on length of delay. I travelled Cordoba to Toledo. I took a 70 minute layover in Madrid as my other option was a little too close for comfort in a new country and train station. It happened I might have made it as arrival and departure were on same level and I didn't need to go through security again. All handled very much like a plane transfer.

With regard to a rental car, if you have no intention of stopping anyplace between points A and B, whatever they are, then public transportation would probably be a better option.

When in Spain I always have a rental car so we can stop at those small town ones runs across. Upon arrival we pick up the car at the airport and head to Toledo where we spend the first night; never going into Madrid. In Toledo we stay at Hotel Maria Cristina. It has a spacious parking garage (unlike many parking garages in Spain) under the hotel and the hotel is about a 5 minute walk to the base of the entrance to the historic center. If you're set on going into Madrid then you can pick up a rental from down near Atocha train station. I know Europcar has pickup there. From there, it's a short 1 miles drive to the beltway where you can head south. I always rent from Avis. At the end of our trip, we drop the car off at the airport and take the metro into town for the last couple nights (just to wind down the trip), then use the metro to go back to the airport.

In Spain, liability insurance in compulsory and included in the price of the rental. I buy CDW through Allianz for $9 a day. That, along with the credit card insurance my card provides would more than cover any damage. There's really no reason to have a car in the large cities. Overnight parking can range between €15-€20 per night. In some cities you get lucky and it's nominal; sometimes even free. In Granada our hotel was right at the Alhambra and we parked in its parking lot. Again, about €15 a day. Don't even try to park in the historic center of Toledo. There is minimal parking and some streets are extremely narrow. On one trip we were found parking in one of the few spots by the Puente of San Martin while we waited to check into the hotel.

For those day trips and the Pueblos Blancos, a rental car is a must. Roads in and around the white towns are one lane each direction, they wind, and some go through the mountains. Because you're driving slower, it takes a little longer to get to your destination. The roads and signs to the towns are fairly well marked and it would be difficult to get lost unless you don't have a map of some type. In Arcos, there is a one way road that leads to the overlook and there is a parking lot at the top. That road is narrow and has a couple 90 degree turns that can make navigating it tricky depending on the size of the vehicle. There is a tram or bus at the bottom that will take one to the top.

Sevilla is a pain to drive in unless you're familiar with the area. Even then, it can be frustrating (like I was) finding a hotel that isn't on a main street. For your itinerary, I'd move Toledo to day 1 since it's less than an hour's drive from Madrid. It would also give you more time in Toledo. If you don't feel you could drive an hour after the flight, then stay in Madrid. Don't count on finding street signs. They are not on every corner and can be hard to spot.

Day 1 - arrive in Madrid and drive to Toledo
Day 2 - Toledo
Day 3 - Depart Toledo for Cordoba, possibly stopping at Consuegra (20 minutes from Toledo) to see its windmills and castle.
Day 4 - Cordoba
Day 5 - Head to Sevilla
etc., etc.

If you decide to drive, once you have a pretty firm itinerary and have hotels reserved, do a Google drive by (street view) of your hotels. It will give you an idea of what they look like, what else is around them, and if you have to use public parking, how close to the hotel it is. The roads between all the major cities are interstates, in good repair, and well marked.

I rented a car this year from Avis, May 15 - May 31 and the total was $473.88. It was an Audi, but I don't recall the model. Picked it up and dropped it off at the airport. If you prepay at the time you rent the vehicle, it can be $30-$40 cheaper than paying later.