Zaragoza

Because Zaragoza is not on the average American tourist radar. I suggest branching out to other more generalist guide books, like lonely planet or DK eyewitnesses.

Americans have so little vacation time that they struggle to get to places like Toledo and Cordoba. It's very nice to go somewhere and not hear English all over the place, though I did encounter a surprising number of English speakers in Zaragoza during the summer of 2016. I don't know whether they were expats or folks like me who failed to research summer temperatures adequately. It's a very interesting city, but the summer heat is often miserable.

We found plenty of information about Zaragoza to plan our 2 night stay there in February using the Lonely Planet guidebook and the excellent Spanish tourist website spain.info. Zaragoza was one of our favourite cities as it had a bit of everything - Roman ruins, churches and moorish palace. Also, the people were friendly, food was good, vibe was relaxed and it was relatively inexpensive. We plan to go back.

There some general information on Zaragoza on about-Spain.net. It’s definitely worth a couple days. If you had the time, it would be easy to spend a week in that area.

It may not be in the guidebook, but there's tons of information on this Forum. Folks have been sharing info about this gem of a destination for quite a while (including me most recently!) Do a search and poke through the posts and trip reports. You'll probably learn more than from any guidebook!

Thank you everyone for your responses. I’m heading to Spain in September and I’m really looking forward to spending a couple of days in Zaragoza.

Good on you for visiting Zaragoza, a hidden gem of a city. Considering it's directly in the middle of the high speed train line between Barcelona and Madrid, it's a wonder why it gets so little attention but maybe that's a good thing!

If you have any specific questions for Zaragoza or your trip to Spain please let us know I'm sure we'll be happy to help :-)

I'll put in another vote for Zaragoza. It's been a long time since I was there (it was 2009) but I thought it was a great city -- a fine historic center, Goya museums, ancient roman sites, a moorish palace, and generally a pleasant ambience, unspoiled, at least then, by mass tourism. If you have the time and inclination, also consider a train ride south to the quaint old medieval town of Teruel.