The following is my itinerary. We are 4 people. I would like to find find should we take trains or buses or a combination. If trains should we reserve seats in advance? If yes how can we do that?
Madrid: 6/19-6/21
Toledo 6/21-6/22
Cordoba 6/22-6/23
Seville 6/23-6/26
Arcos 6/26-6/27
Ronda 6/27-6/29
Granada 6/29-7/2
Madrid 7/2 - 7/3
Any help is greatly appreicated.
Hello again,
As aforementioned, if you want to save some money, you may want to book discounted train tickets in advance especially for the following routes, since these routes are serviced by high speed trains such as AVE and ALVIA ( and ticket prices will continue to increase as your date of travel approaches):
Madrid to Córdoba
Córdoba to Sevilla
Granada to Madrid
You can buy your tickets from Madrid to Toledo (and back to Madrid), 1-2 days in advance, at Atocha's train station, for best time selection. These train tickets do not change in price.
I booked my train tickets on the Renfe website, and paid with PayPal NOT with my credit card.
If you're having issues with Renfe, you may want to book your train tickets on trainline.eu which appears to be more user friendly, but I've not personally used.
These are the train stations you'll need:
I've not traveled to Ronda nor Arcos de la Frontera (yet), but according to rome2rio.com, you can take a Los Amarillos Bus from Sevilla (SEVILLA PRADO S.S.) to Arcos and a TG Comes Bus from Arcos to Ronda.
You can then take a train from Ronda to Granada.
Keep in mind that on any of the routes to/from Granada, you will be on a train/bus combination due to railway construction/renovations around Granada. So when you take the train from Ronda, it will take you to Antequera Santa Ana's train station, where you will transfer to a bus (serviced by Renfe) which will take you the rest of the journey to Granada's train station.
When you depart Granada, you will again go via bus (departing from Granada's train station) to Antequera, where you will transfer to an AVE train which will take you the rest of the journey to Madrid.
Enjoy your trip!
If you are booking trains on Renfe's website, you will find this tutorial necessary: https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187514-c80518/Madrid:Spain:Buying.Renfe.Tickets.Online.html. Yes, do use Paypal instead of trying credit cards (wastes time since they almost never work).
Note that there will be buses on all these routes as well. Buses are cheaper, and while the AVE is faster than a bus, the regular trains are not always faster since buses take the highways. If you want to learn about bus alternatives, a great trick (which I learned from acraven on this Forum) is to use Rome2Rio: https://www.rome2rio.com/. Put in your route and choose the bus option. See which bus companies do the route, and then go to their websites (you may need Google Translate) to get definitive information on schedules and prices. Often more than one bus company runs on a route, with different prices. You usually don't need to buy tickets far in advance for buses, but can wait till you get there. So, if a train route is unavailable or too expensive, look at the buses.
A clarification to the post above. Yes, if you "take the train" from Granada to Madrid, part of the route will be on a bus. However, the bus is operated by Renfe, and you book it as one ticket (Granada to Madrid) through Renfe. The bus even uses Granada's train station instead of bus station. Reports on this Forum indicate that the transfer from bus to train is coordinated and seamless.
The only thing I would add to Priscilla and Harold is that it may be better to go from Sevilla to Arcos by train to Jerez and then bus to Arcos. . . . depends on the bus schedule from Sevilla to Arcos. Also, I found it much easier to use the train station in Sevilla than the bus station.
Harord,
Thanks for clarifying my post for the OP! :-)
Non Savvy Traveller,
You may find Steven's (from White Plains, NY) reply reasuring on this post, since he has recently traveled the Granada to Madrid route on the bus/AVE combination ticket.
We, my mom and I, actually opted to take the ALSA bus from Córdoba to Granada, then from Granada to Sevilla, to avoid dealing with the train to bus transfer mainly because of my mom's age (88) when we were there in October 2015.
I can't believe that the Renfe railway has been under construction (around Granada) since April 2015!
It will be great though once the renovations get completed because there will be AVE trains from Granada to/from Madrid and to/from Granada to/from Barcelona!
Thank you all for your advice and suggestions. It was really helpful
Has anyone used UK website trainline.com? They offer more choices of renfe trains than even renfe website itself and much better prices then renfe. I have tried ACP Rail, Movelia.es and renfe and I find this site the best so far.
