Spanish Honeymoon Roadtrip Madrid to the coast nine days

Monday – Arrive in Madrid, pick up a rental car, and drive to Nerja for a relaxing beach night. We'll stop in Úbeda for lunch along the way.

Where are you coming from? If you are on an overnight trans-Atlantic flight a 6 hour drive immediately after getting off the plane may make all the rest of your travel plans moot.

If you have not purchased your plane tickets yet, suggest you consider multi-city ( aka open jaw) routing. One possibility is fly into Madrid, stay there and do all you Madrid area activities then continue on and finish in Barcelona and fly home from there.

I think you are packing in too much. You will spend more time in the car than in Spain.

Driving all the way to Nerja on arrival day just for one night doesn’t make sense. As stated, it’s a very long drive if made after a long flight. The rest of the trip seems like a whirlwind tour of places that you’ll barley have enough time to visit. You’ll be able to say you were there, but how much you get to see if a different story. There’s a lot of travel time in your itinerary for such a short trip.

While I’ve yet to visit Úbeda, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site and probably merits more than a lunch stop.

I assume with Ávila it’s meaningful for Teresa of Ávila. If it’s that meaningful then consider adding Alba de Tormes to your itinerary and visit her tomb at Carmelite Monastery/Museum. Alba de Tormes is an hour from Ávila. To make that visit you’d need to drop something from the already overly ambitious itinerary.

First, best wishes on your wedding.

The feedback is basically "too much driving; too little time for enjoying." Assuming you are arriving from North America, you really don't want to follow up a trans-Atlantic flight with a 5+ hour drive. I think the general advice in this forum is to avoid driving on that first day. I'd also suggest you remove Granada from your itinerary. Although an interesting destination, Granada is far from everything else in your itinerary. Depending on how much time you spend in Avila, you might add Segovia.

So, my suggestion is to arrive in Madrid and take the train to Valencia and spend at least 2 nights there. Next take the train to Barcelona, and again, stay for several nights. Then train back to Madrid. You could then explore Avila (and maybe Segovia) as a day trip by car, or you could spend a night or two in either Avila or Segovia. End your trip in Madrid and use the train for a day trip to Toledo.

Let us know your thoughts.

Thank you, everyone, for the feedback! I will try to pare down. Is Granada worth the time, so I should devote more time to it? Perhaps Seville/Cadiz, Granada, and Madrid area? Thank you!

Where are you arriving from? What is booked so far?
Have you scoped out the drives?
For me, this plan would end the marriage before it started -- kidding! But please, accept the helpful advice given here. At least half needs to be eliminated. Theses are largely not scenic pleasant drives--I wanted to doze for most of the long highway drives I have done in Spain, and you do not have time to do the meandering route.

So far, we have not booked. Now considering, upon landing, flying to Mallorca, spending a few days there, and then flying to Sevilla or Barcelona before finishing up in Madrid. Has anyone done anything similar?

Hello, again. It sounds as though the one thing you definitely want is beach time. Maybe flying all the way to Spain for beach time and a few days of sight-seeing isn't the best plan. I'm wondering if one of the Caribbean islands wouldn't be a more relaxing option.

Hi Anita, thank you! Not necessarily, it just sounds nice to go to the beach first to relax after a week of wedding preparations and everything. We really want to experience Spain. I love Italy and was in Rome for some time, but I never was able to visit Spain. Would you have a better suggestion?

I am attracted to coastal areas, and though I may not spend all day on a beach I find it a perfectly agreeable goal on a trip.
I would include Mallorca if you can devote close to a week--I would not consider flying back and forth "worth it" for just a few days. Spending the entire trip there would not be a bad idea at all--check flights to PMI. You will likely want a car for exploring the island.
It's just an opinion (albeit one formed from decades of trips) so take it as you wish, but the less moving around you do, the more time you have to enjoy a place. I try to stick to 2-3 locations max for a nine-day trip, and I stick to close-together places.
With nine days, I think the following are all good itineraries keeping transport in mind:
Madrid + Barcelona
BCN + Mallorca (would prefer all Mallorca)
BCN + nearby towns to the north or south
Madrid + Andalucia
It is when you try to combine far flung places that you get into the weeds. Good luck!

Big congrats on your upcoming nuptials. Planning a honeymoon is pretty big task. Good luck.
I would concur with the others in that you are packing way too much in a very short period of time. Spain is a very big country, somewhere between California and Texas in size. The driving time of your rough itinerary is almost 28 hours which does not include any time for stops for gas and food, stops for directions, or potentially hours spent driving while lost. In addition, most cities in Spain have limited parking and very restrictive parking regulations. I would highly recommend using the train system. In most cases, trains will get you there faster, they are relatively inexpensive, and you leave the driving to someone who knows where they are going. Plus, if you want to experience Spain, why not consider traveling like one?
Overall, I might suggest limiting your honeymoon to a region of Spain. Perhaps Catalunya (Barcelona, the Montserrat Monastery, Sagrada Familia) or Madrid and the surrounding cities of Toledo, Segovia, and Avila, or the Andalucian cities of Granada, Seville and Cordoba plus Nerja and its beaches. The less the time spent in a car, the better and the more time to tend to important honeymoon-related tasks.

A honeymoon exploring with your new spouse is very exciting! I did that with my husband in Croatia in 2018. Looking back we stayed in 5 places for 6 nights which was too many places and too much travel. We rented a car too.
I’d recommend just picking 2-3 places and enjoying them. Travel by train if you can? Saves on the hassle of finding parking! If you do rent a car, brush up on your manual shift driving skills before you go.. most cars are manual in Europe (or at least tend to be cheaper than automatics).
I have really only been to Madrid in Spain- it was a lovely city but probably just worth staying the night before you fly back home.

On some routes within Spain--including Barfelona-Madrid-Cordoba-Seville--a train will be a great deal faster than a car. Once you pin down your itinerary, it's worth checking the train schedule (renfe.com) to see whether part of the trip would be more efficient by train. Spain has fabulous towns scattered all over, but there is, as mentioned above, rather a lot of very unexciting countryside.