Spain in September, 9 days, in-out Barcelona, please help

Barcelona, Seville and Granada are certainly among the very top tourist destinations in Spain, but you have only seven days, and some of your group may not yet be firing on all cylinders on Sept 5. A group of 11 people is going to be unwieldy. And slow.

Truly, there's plenty in Catalunya to keep you busy for a week without tackling a 16-hour (Granada) or 11-hour (Seville) round-trip by train. With the time needed to check in and out of hotels, either of those train trips would chew up the better part of two days and would leave you with only five fully useful sightseeing days spread across two or three major cities. You could, of course, head right back to the airport on September 5 and fly to either Granada or Seville. Check Skyscanner for flight options. Personally, I think adding another flight to a 7-day trip is stressful. Flying both ways? There's just no way I'd even consider it.

If you must go to Andalucía, I suggest sticking to just one city. Unless you dare to book a separately-ticketed flight south on your arrival day, you're looking at two hotel check-ins in Barcelona plus one in Andalucía. That's a lot for seven days.

Two full days is short selling Barcelona.
Three days is a minimum to do the city justice.
Four days alllows for a more comprehensive in depth experience.

I would keep your party in Barcelona for the entire 8 nights and develop some day excursion options to keep everyone interested.
Tarragona
Sitges
Montserrat
Girona
Figueres
Cadaques

Thank you so much.
I heard so much about Granada and Seville hence was thinking about them. IS it possible to fit one in ?
I do want to experience the culture, the food, the life of the local. I know Barcelona is a port city, full of cruise ship tourists, and I want to get far away from them as much as possible :)
If those 2 above cities are not possible, you think it is worth to see .. Madrid, or some charming places with beautiful architecture/sightseeing. If Madrid is similar to Barcelona, we can skip it.
we can use high speed train if that will save time, or even flying.

The times I gave you for Granada and Seville are for the fastest trains available.

Madrid is much closer to Barcelona. You can get there by AVE in 2-1/2 to 2-3/4 hours. The thing about Madrid, though, is that its major sights are art museums. How does your group feel about those? Madrid is a handsome city, but aside from the museums, what I like best about Madrid is the fabulous side-trips it offers (Toledo, Segovia, Cuenca and more). But now you're talking about taking a train to Madrid and then making side-trips to other cities. All of this eats into the time you have in Spain. It's unfortunately the case that the scenery between Barcelona and Madrid is not terribly exciting, so I count train time in that area as pretty much a total loss.

Madrid doesn't have the Moorish architecture that may be the main thing drawing you to Seville and Granada.

You can stay in Barcelona and make a side-trip in Girona in 38 minutes. Girona has a large medieval district with a long segment of its wall still standing (you can walk on it). There are two very nice cathedrals and a good museum. There are lots of cafes and restaurants. I opted to spend 3 nights in Girona, and it made a very nice change from big-city Barcelona.

Alternatively, within 2 hours or a bit less you can travel from Barcelona to Zaragoza by train. While it's not one of Spain's top destinations (I certainly preferred Girona), it has an attractive historic district and a well-restored Moorish palace. Like Andalucia it can be miserably hot in the summer, and I'm not sure how comfortable it can be expected to be in early September.

One big advantage to staying in Barcelona and making day-trips is that your group is large, and I struggle to imagine getting 11 people on the same page, sightseeing-wise. With a single base, the modern-art lovers can go the Miro Foundation; the classical-art lovers, to MNAC; the funky-architecture fans, to some extra modernista sights; etc. This is harder to manage if you're in a large city for only 2 or 3 days, because some members of the group may not get comfortable enough with the environment and the transportation options to wander off on their own.

Barcelona gets a lot of tourists, but so do Madrid, Seville and Granada. If all you do is go to the top X sights in a city, you are going to encounter a lot of other tourists. If you try to visit 2 or 3 cities in a week, you are likely to spend all of your time at such tourist-clogged sights. Stay in a city like Barcelona for a week, and you have time to wander off the beaten path a bit. To that end, I offer a suggestion: Sant Pau. I spent a couple of hours there (could have used more time) last year in August. I think I saw 6 to 10 other tourists wandering around. It was unbelievable.

Thank you very much for all of your help. These ladies want to eat and shop, sightseeing but probably not much .. museum. I really love those Moorish architecture offered by Alhambra (Granada) but I guess that has to be in another trip.
Per your suggestion, I will make Barcelona as the base, will find the beaten path you suggest and stay in the city most of the times.
We will venture out to Girona, probably will spend a couple nights there as I guess it is cheaper than in Barcelona. Will take a trip to Zaragoza since 2 hour train is ok as we can go and be back in same day.

You could try this if you were hell bent on the Mezquita in Cordoba, and the Alhambra in Granada. It still leaves you 3 full days for Barcelona.

Sep 5
AVE 3940
Dep 08:30 BARCELONA SANTS (Spain)
Arr 13:12 CORDOBA-CENTRAL (Spain)

Sep 6
AVN 8155
Dep 16:30 CORDOBA-CENTRAL (Spain)
Arr 17:06 ANTEQUERA-SANTA ANA (Spain)
TRN13924
Dep 17:38 ANTEQUERA-SANTA ANA (Spain)
Arr 19:14 GRANADA (Spain)

Sep 8
Vueling VY2015
Dep 19:10 Granada
Arr 20:35 Barcelona

Barcelona certainly offers shopping opportunities. The modernista sites have sales areas reminiscent of the museum shops in the US, with nice merchandise. There are cute little shops in the Barri Gotic. The area around the Picasso Museum has a lot of shopping if you can stand the crowds spilling out of that museum (which is indeed tourist-clogged). I saw pop-up stands on one of the bridges to the Girona old town and along Avinguda del Portal d'Angel just south of Pl. Catalunya in Barcelona. Both of those seemed to be daily and the goods were of pretty good quality (not a bunch of tourist junk).

I believe there's a once-a-week antique market outdoors on a square near the Cathedral in Barcelona, but I don't remember exactly where it is.

There are also some nice handcraft shops in Girona, but they are small and rather scattered.

I saw some nice-looking leather goods in many shop windows, but I am no judge of quality where shoes and handbags are concerned.

Hi David,

NOTE THAT Sept 11th is La Diada, the National Day of Catalonia... -much like your 4th of July, just that we're not (just yet!) celebrating independence :) Saying this because aside from being a very special day for us, it's also a holiday, so it's not a normal day for tourist stuff. More info: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/spain/solo-traveler-in-barcelona-on-catalunya-day

Please stop thinking about visiting the Andalucia region from Barcelona on a trip like this. As you have seen, it is a very LONG train ride. Most people fly and do you really want to put 11 people on an airplane and back? Enjoy the time you have seeing and eating, not riding trains and planes. They will thank you for it.

Having said that, you've gotten some really good options like visiting Girona. Tarragona is a great daytrip from Barcelona to see some Roman ruins. A dramatic Roman coliseum along the coast, a nice but not too big museum and another set of Roman ruins next door. Spend a few hours, have lunch, return. You could even stop in Sitges, a lovely beach town in between.

Another option not mentioned that would be at the top of a foodie list is Valencia. Spend a couple nights there eating paella and tapas. Incredible food town and easy, high speed AVE train ride from Barcelona. Very laid back city that will offer your group a different character and is more "Spanish" (Catalunya is not Spanish and has more in common culturally and food wise with France).

Also agree that two days is not near enough time to see Barcelona. Even just hitting the highlights needs three days. And don't underestimate how long you'll spend eating - Spanish restaurants do not rush you. Figure 2 hours each for lunch and dinner each day. Plus time for early evening tapas.

RS may promote train travel, but plan to fly to Granada. Fight is one hour. Consider recouperating in Granada rather than Barcelona. Know, however, there are often flight delays, so don't book crucial tickets for right after arrival. As mentioned, Vueling gets you to Granada. Can train to Seville via Cordoba. Research flying back from Seville to Barcelona - should also be Vueling, but there are numerous cheap airlines that fly in Europe. Also, know that carry on requirements for these planes are smaller than North American requirements - and they may well weigh carry on, so decide on priorities. Some even limit checked sizes. Easy enough to check flight options, then baggage limits and costs.
It is rushed, but I expect you already know that. Your group are also going to need to ensure acceptance of a tight schedule and what their priorities are. Herding 11 people around is going to create some challenging logistics.
Have you actually bought your flights? Because if not, then you can review flying right to Granada (via Madrid) and returned from Barcelona. The one or 2 hundred $ saved on a Barcelona return flight is eaten up in wasted time and transit to another city.
If group travel planning is something you do regularly or will do in the future, you really want to embrace open-jaw flights even if you think the country is 'small'.

I don't know what can I do without your help, folks !
Enric, I envy you. Your country is beautiful.
None of us had been to Spain, but most of us had seen Paris, Rome .. and such.
My job is difficult just like you suspected. Luckily, no kids or teenagers (only 8 demanding over 50 ladies, you get the idea).
For the men, it is mostly .. me as one is unknown (Did not really know him much) while the other will take care of food places and photography (women like to have pictures to be taken, and I can not do everything, lol).
Thank you so much for the tip about the 9/11 holiday Enric.. We love love love and respect local culture and would very much want to participate in the festive spirit of your holiday. No, we will not go anywhere but will be right there to see Barcelona of that holiday. I now know I have tell those ladies that Sun and Mon (10 and 11 th), most shops .. closed. I will be stoned to death if coming back to Barcelona before flying back to US and those ladies want to do some shopping and I tell them oops, shops are closed :) Bad planning right ?
If it is just me and my wife (we love travel backpacking style), we can do lots of things, but I think suggestion from you is right. We have to manage and not tired people out.
I am not saying areas around Barcelona are not beautiful, and yes, we will try to plan day trips in days when we are back at Barcelona, but because if seeing the Roman ruins is the main event, most of us already saw, in .. Rome.
I think I have to take out the Cordoba trip, instead, we will fly to Granada, and back.
Let's give it a 2 hour flight each way, I think it is ok.
As you said Barcelona cuisine is more like French, hopefully, Granada cuisine is closer to Spanish cuisine.
Seeing Spain with a metropolitan, Spanish architecture city and enjoying Franco/Spain cuisine in Barcelona and seeing Moorish architecture with real Spanish cuisine in Granada will be a win win situation, I suppose.
The way it goes, do you think it makes sense to stay in Barcelona couple nights (the 4 and 5th), flying to Granada early the 6th, flying back late the 8th (like we stay 2 nights in Granada but we have 3 full days to visit places in Granada). The rest of the times, we use Barcelona as the base (and I still have Sat the 9th for the ladies to do some shopping).
What do you think ?
I have this concern: 11 of us will pack light, and likely we will roll around the carry-ons. Is there convenient places to store those carry-ons ? we will likely to stay in airbnb places, but there are generally time to check in/check out at those airbnb.
The flying time from granada is kind of odd, only 3 flights a day, and I think it is odd for us to hang around town rolling with those carry-ons.
Thanks ahead.

I'm not trying to be rude, but I think your plan is absolutely insane and you are getting some poor advice here. You are expecting to get 11 people to and from the airport, twice. Plus the cost of said flights and baggage fees. Plus the wasted time. It may be only an hour flight, but it will take 4.5 - 5 hours door to door total. Double that since you have to return to Barcelona. And you've already pointed out that everyone will have their luggage with them. Yes some train or bus stations have luggage storage, but add another hour of your day wasted for everyone to go back and retrieve them later. You know these people better than we do, but I've never been in a group that big that doesn't have some people get grumpy, tired or hangry at some point.

I want to be constructive so if you really want to see both Barcelona and the Andalucia region, consider a few possibilities:

One important question is why you are flying into and out of Barcelona? You'd be much better served not backtracking and getting a multi-city airline ticket (sometimes called open jaw) rather than roundtrip. Or catching a flight connection on arrival or return in Spain rather than staying in Barcelona a couple days at each end of the trip.

One possibility is to arrive in Barcelona and spend a few days. Then fly to Granada and spend a couple days. On to Sevilla for a couple days and fly home from Sevilla or take the train to Madrid and fly home from there.

Another option is to focus on Barcelona and Madrid. Madrid has a good food scene and plenty to keep people occupied. Toledo, just a 30 minute train ride away, has plenty of Moorish architecture, although not as grandiose as Andalucia. You could even stay in Toledo and daytrip into Madrid.

Another option is to take the train from Barcelona to Sevilla and spend a few nights (about the same 5 hour trip, but mostly spent comfy on a train). The Alcazar there is as beautiful as the Alhambra, just built by Moorish craftsmen for the new Spanish royalty. Take a daytrip to Cordoba to see the Mezquita. Then train to Madrid to fly home.

The Forum is not just an 'advice' column, but also a place where people can share ideas and suggestions, have questions answered, or seek solutions to specific travel dilemmas. Rather than poor advice, I think it's more a case of different ideas specifically addressing the original proposal that has been put forward. The OP, of course, will use a filter to make decisions as with how to proceed.

Well, davidbntran, you see... I find very difficult to put this into words without sounding a bit arrogant, but Catalonia is a piece of the Western civilisation that has seen everything, from Paleolithic settlements to Iberians, Greeks, Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, Crusaders... with plenty of Romanesque and Gothic churches, Medieval castles, fortresses, Art Noveau buildings and historical sites -many of which are UNESCO sites- ... so I am afraid you can find a bit of everything when it comes to History, not only Roman ruins :)

But not only that, the privileged geographical situation of Catalonia allows for a mix of landscapes and microclimates that facilitate going from golden sandy beaches to picturesque coves to dense forests to high peaks (+10000 ft) on a relatively short drive. Catalonia is "just" about the size of Maryland (US) but it has so many different types of landscapes! Living in Barcelona you can easily go hiking and "mushroom hunting" in the forests of Central Catalonia in Spring, toast to the sun in magnificent beaches in summer and have fun skiing in great slopes in the Pyrenees in winter.

This is to say that I find literally impossible to convey all of the things you could be doing without overloading the forum, much less without knowing you and your tastes and expectations. So, perhaps you should browse a few generalistic brochures about my little nation, Catalonia:

http://act.gencat.cat/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Welcome.pdf
http://act.gencat.cat/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/CATALUNYA_EXPERIENCE_EN_DE_RU.pdf
http://act.gencat.cat/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Rutes-per-Catalunya-cataleg-EN-br.pdf

Enjoy.... and apologies for hyper-braggin'

PS. I didn't want to enter into the "topic" discussion... but I agree with Douglas, to me, it also seems a bit too dense and too rushed... maybe is that I prefer a more relaxed sort of travelling that allows me to soak the culture and ambience of the places I visit :)))

Hi, first of all, I appreciate all of your advices, and I think there s no such thing as poor advice. As you posted on here, I believe each one of you already had some kind of experience about the issue, and are well appreciated.
We all come from all kind of backgrounds, hence we all express out opinions .. differently, so that is ok with me ...
Back to the issue ...
The tickets are already bought, in fact, I pondered with the option of flying into another city and coming back from another city, however, the flight selection on that is poor, in term of flying path from the airline and the cost. Trust me, I did research the price for the flight ticket carefully.
We will fly out from San Jose airport, which is our hometown, an hour south of San Francisco, California, stop at Chicago for less than 3 hours before continue flying straight into Barcelona. Return path, from Barcelona, stop at London for less than 2 hours before straight back home to San Jose, same day out and in. The flight is only 568 usd per person, took advantage of the Labor day holiday here in the US. We only need to have 6 weekdays off for this trip and I do not think we can get any better price (and timing) than that.
The price landed at good time (1:40 pm in Barcelona) and out also at good time (noon time also from barcelona), hence we do not waste any hotel time.
Now, back to the issue .. I mentioned to the group the idea of Barcelona and Granada as the 2 places we will visit. The response from some is after we land in Barcelona 91:40 pm, hopefully international flights are on time, which they usually do), we will take a flight straight to Granada. That way, we need not to unpack, come back to airport .. any of those thing. We can then recover and enjoy Granada for an extra night, then fly back to Barcelona to stay for rest of the trip.
Please advice if that is feasible and a good plan.
Thanks.

Skyscanner shows non-stop Vueling flights at 5:05 PM and 8:30 PM on September 4. Current RT fare (excluding fees, which might substantial) is just over $100. The tricky thing is deciding whether to risk buying tickets on the 5:05 PM flights that will be worthless if your inbound flight is seriously delayed (or the schedule is changed). If you opt to wait until you arrive in Barcelona, the fare will almost certainly be far higher, and I imagine there's a good chance that 11 last-minute seats would not be available.

I checked for a September 7 return, figuring that you'll want more than one full day in Granada.

wow, that skyscanner web is wonderful.
I think we can take the risk. Fly in barcelona at 1:40, wait and take the flight with vueling at 5 is ok.
We will take the 7 pm flight back on Thu the 7th. That way, we have 3 full days for Granada.
I saw the price is at 122 euros round trip for the granada flight, which should be okay.
It can be still a bit early to book that granada round trip flight, I think.

I've never taken a flight on a European budget airline, so I have no personal experience with their pricing mechanism, but I feel safe in saying, "Don't expect the fare to remain that low forever."

Monday/Thursday flights for next week are $168/$170, and this is early March. I think it's reasonable to assume that there will be more demand in early September, though I note that there are also more flights then.

Obviously, you must be sure of your travel schedule before buying those tickets.

From San Jose for a week! sorry, but that is 9 hours time difference - jet lag supreme unless you all take Ambien or are travelling first class. I do see that there is a Jet Lag post on RS Transportation forum. Okay. I'm over that now.

It is a bit of a risk, but I can see the plan for going straight to Granada...but then I sort of suggested that. I might also stick my neck out and suggest you discuss the flight details on another global travel forum that has an Air Travel Forum with experienced global flyers. Particularly with the size of your group, I suggest as much feedback from global forums as you can get. Not to diss this one, but there are others with wider readership and posters with extensive knowledge. Also google some Vueling booking strategies and know when flights are open for bookings. Not all are available 320 days out like major airlines. In fact, I would suggest being pretty comfortable with your in Spain transportation information before providing feedback to 'the team'. That all being said, some may not want to get back onto a plane, and you can weigh the wait times, limited schedule of flying to the longer on the tracks travel with train. One concern there is that if you want the best train cost, you need to book ahead and then we are back at the risk of a delayed international arrival, customs, etc. Review the cost of the train tickets if bought at the window for immediate boarding.
Granada is going to be a different shopping venue - so be prepared for some to fall in love with all the Moroccan type lighting, scarves, candle holders and things in the Albacin (old town) area; therefore know the cost for overweight or checked bags.

If only two days, there is left luggage storage at the Barcelona airport and you can take small tote bags or back packs to Granada. Bear in mind that storage is 10euro a day per bag. http://www.aeropuertobarcelona-elprat.com/ingl/consignas-aeropuerto.htm

Thanks Maria... yet, just for info, the official website of the airport is: http://www.aena.es/en/barcelona-airport/index.html ... the one you listed is from an obscure private company that "squatted" several domains to resemble the official authority, but it's merely a cul-de-sac for private links.

Oops. Thanks Enric for bringing that to our attention. Looked fairly official. I think the details are still correct as similar pricing was posted on some of the Barcelona tourism sites.