Trip to Barcelona and Madrid during Semana Santa

In a perfect world I'd book my flights "multi-city" or "open-jaw", that is, into one city and home from the other. However that's sometimes more expensive even including the cost in time and transportation back-tracking and anyway you've already booked your flights.

I'm not a big fan of packing, changing hotels, and unpacking, so that's a reason to train or fly to Madrid upon arrival. Some trains are more expensive if bought at the last minute but you can't be sure your arriving flight won't be delayed which makes scheduling awkward. Also I don't sleep well on planes and prefer to walk around outdoors for most of my arrival day to help adjust to the time zone and recover from jet lag. So I guess I would choose to sandwich Madrid between two stays in Barcelona, or even skip Madrid and stay in Barcelona to have time for day trips and to have a more relaxed pace.

I did some checking for another poster quite recently, and I found that an awful lot of the top sights in Barcelona will be open even on Easter (assuming you can trust their websites, which I do). I'll see whether I can find that post and copy the info into this thread.

Nope--I was wrong. The earlier post was about the Christmas/New Year period.

But you can check yourself by going to the official websites of some of the top attractions and looking at their hours. If they are closed on Easter or at other times during Holy Week, the information should be there.;;;

Short trips to Barcelona are difficult to manage since so many of the sights pretty much require that you pre-purchase a timed ticket. If you do more than one such site a day (in your first sightseeing time-slot), you have to do a lot of guessing: How much time will you want to spend at each site? How long will you stand in line--even with a ticket--before you get inside? How long will it take you to get to your second sight? Where will you eat lunch and how long will that take? It really is difficult to squeeze a lot of indoor attractions into a short Barcelona visit.

I don't think Semana Santa impacts Madrid very much or Catalonia much at all. There could well be processions in Toledo every day during the week, increasing crowds and making it a little difficult to get around. What do you plan to do in Madrid? Why not spend all your time nearer Barcelona. Valencia is great for a 1-2 night stay.

I think Barcelona may be more interesting for kids, so I would go to Madrid first and "get it out of the way." Also, Semana Santa is a big deal in Madrid, especially the few days just before Easter Sunday. If you stay just 2 or 3 full days in Madrid at the onset of your trip, you can get out before the religious festivities take over the city. (Personally, I found the parade interesting for about the first 30 minutes, and then it was more of the same for the next three hours.)