Trains in Spain

For schedules anywhere in Europe, you can check the German national rail website, Deutsche Bahn. But for ticket purchases, your best bet is still the Renfe site. There's a chance the site was down for maintenance, depending on when you tried to access it. I've used it several times and have been successful. Let me know what dates and routes you were trying, and I'll have a go.

I agree, try the renfe.es site again. You might want to consider looking at airfare too. Believe it or not, sometimes flying is cheaper than taking the train.

The train system in Spain is not as extensive as central Europe but when combined with the bus system it works pretty well. I have never found any advantage to purchasing tickets more than a day or two in advance. We last traveled in Spain over New Years and had no trouble getting seats within a couple hours of departure.

Depending on where you want to travel, savings on the Renfe site can be quite considerable. Barcelona-Madrid is priced at about 129 Euro one-way for walkup tickets...Web price can be as low as 52 Euro. Madrid-Sevilla is about 77 Euro walkup, 31 Euro on the web. If you can get those, you're doing as well as the discount airlines, but without any journeys to/from airports. It's also useful for booking daytrips from Madrid to places like Toledo....trains which are very popular during the tourist season. That way, you can maximize your day by getting the first trip out and the last trip back, if you want. Don't forget, tickets can only be booked 62 days out, so you can't get anything earlier than that. However, since midnight is the changeover, and since eastern time is six hours behind Spain's time, we in North America can get a jump on the discount tickets from 6 pm-ish onwards on the 63rd day....in your case, Scott, from 3 pm. It may take them an hour or two to load all the new fares in each day, but you will have first crack at them.

I tried the renfe site several times over a several day period, same problem. Comes up completely blank every time I enter in a route. Eventually, however, I went to another site, where it appears that the trains there run almost as infrequently as our beloved Amtrak and that it would about 24 hours and cost about $200 to get from Seville to Girona, which is my route.

I had already made a Ryanair plane reservation for super-cheap, but wanting to be more eco-friendly in my choice is why I sought to learn the train schedule and pricing.

That's because there are no thru trains that will carry you right across Spain from one corner to the other like that. Your route would be Sevilla-Madrid, Madrid-Barcelona, and Barcelona-Girona. Renfe schedules show an 845 am departure from Sevilla, arriving in Girona at 546 pm (9 hours) at 115 Euro ($155 USD). If your destination is actually Barcelona, not Girona, then the travel time is cut to 6:45 and the price to 96 Euro ($130 USD)

I'm aware of and anticipated that there would be such point to point routes along the way. That's typical of all countries. But I was shown only one option, whereas Germany's DB system gives you a whole array of options and schedules.

I wonder how you got the renfe site to work. It never works for me. Perhaps it's just not compatible with Safari?

Hmmm...good point Scott. I hadn't considered that. I haven't seen any reports on this board of problems dealing with Renfe thru Safari. But Safari users are still a relatively rare breed, as are those who book train tickets thru Renfe. When I checked your route for June 2nd (an arbitrary choice), I booked it in three legs, back-timing it from the train leaving Barcelona for Girona and working in reverse. There are hourly (and sometimes twice hourly) trains from Sevilla-Madrid, Madrid-Barcelona, and Barcelona-Girona. By breaking it down into those three component parts, it's easy to find the ticket prices and times for a number of combinations...depending on how early you want to arise in Sevilla, or how late you want to arrive in Girona.

There's a poster on tripadvisor who has done an entier how to on Renfe and... you need to be using Microsoft Explorer according to that thread.