Hi, everyone!
I have a conference in Barcelona end of August and have about a week of vacation beforehand. I was in Barcelona and Madrid about 10 years ago, so already know these 2 cities (although excited to see the progress in the Sagrada Familia).
If you had a week to travel in the country, where would you go before landing in Barcelona?
TIA!
I would go to Andalucia in a heartbeat! Granada, Sevilla, Cordoba. However, Andalucia will be very, very hot in August! Don't know how well you tolerate heat.
Another awesome suggestion is to rent a car and drive along the Costa Brava, north of Barcelona. Beautiful coastal scenery, delicious seafood, and lovely fishing villages. We stayed in Cadaques and loved it. You could also spend a night or two in Girona. And drive up into the Pyrenees.
That's a very hot time of year in much of Spain, so I'd strongly consider the Catalan Pyrenees and/or the Basque Country. Galicia (the area around Santiago de Compostela) would also work, but it's all the way across the country to the west.
I am brazilian, so heat is part of my DNA. ;)
There are standard, all-but-scripted answers to your question: either
[1] Fun-in-the-sun beach resorts like Marbella and Benidorm, or
[2] World-Famous "must-see" destinations inland, like Granada, Seville, and Toledo.
But you know this already. So to answer your question literally -- where would I go -- I would visit (or in my case, revisit) Zaragoza and Teruel, and if possible, other quaint, historic towns in Aragon (like Albarracin) that I didn't have time to see on my trip there (2009). Barcelona is easily reached from these towns.
I would go to Granada to see the Alhambra!
For just a week, stick with the northeast corner of the country. Girona’s pretty close to Barcelona, to the north (would you be flying in and out of Barcelona?). And/or west/northwest of Barcelona, there’s also Zaragoza, San Sebastián, Bilbao.
Just some teasers for getting ideas:
Enjoy!
PS: Plus: staying in the same geographical area you avoid wasting travelling time at airports
