Getting around in Spain

We prefer to rent a car and it is easy to do so. The drivers & the highways are great. The biggest 'problem' (for some) can be driving in the cities along with the high price of parking. We usually find our hotel, park the car and then walk or use transit. GPS and good maps are a must. She will probably have more comfort & ease in a vehicle than by plane, train or bus.

For those location, a car would be a big hassle - parking and driving in cities. Those cities are well served by train and even second class would be more comfortable than a car. Remember European cars are smaller unless you request a big sedan and that is expensive.

A car's not going to help her that much and it will just slow you down. Driving in the cities is not that big a deal, but finding a place to park is. You'd have to drop people off, find a place to park and walk back - - it can sometimes take a half hour and the dropees just wind up cooling their heels waiting for the driver to catch up. Even in Grandada, there's plenty of parking at the alhambra, but it's a good hump from the lot to the entrance. The best option will probably be to use the trains combined with a lot of taxis.

Without question, the easiet and most comfortable way to get from city to city will be the train. You'd have to rent a pretty large (expensive) car for a larger person to be comfy and many of those are very long drives. The trains are almost all very comfy and if you splurged for 1st class there would be lots of room to sit back and relax. Plus you can get up and move around to stretch legs and keep circulation moving. Once in each city, that will be the challenge. Public transportation is great in Madrid and Barcelona, but the others will require lots of walking, buses or taxis. Even the Alhambra requires a lot of walking. But a car will be a real challenge in the cities for the reasons previously posted. Hopefully your budget allows for plenty of taxis and learn the bus systems to avoid long walks. With the exception of Granada, most of these cities are pretty flat though.

I really have to vote for the car, but............. only for the Seville, Cordoba and Granada area. The train, or maybe one of the lo-cost inter EU airlines that you can find on Whichbudget.com, are your best option for the BCN to Madrid to Seville legs. We used the plane for our BCN to Grenada leg last year. We had no problem finding parking in Seville, Cordoba and Granada; but it averaged $19 EU nite. We were able to drive up to the door of our hotels, which will be nice for grandma. Rick has some great hotel recs, which have easy parking acess. It was an immense help to bring my GPS from home, but we still needed a Michelin fold-out map of Spain; some of the newer East-West roads were not on the GPS. We went to the AutoEurope.com car rental website, and played with the pick-up and drop off locations. We picked up the car in one city, and dropped it off in another. AE is a rental car broker, based in Maine, that handles all of the major EU car rental companies. You can call them if you have any questions. We have used them, with great success, for most of our EU auto rentals.

I have lived in Spain for over 5 years and for some time found driving in the cities a problem. And I am a very confident driver. Now we know our way around cities like Granada, Seville, Cordoba and Malaga and know where parking stations are, it is OK, most of the time. Getting to the outskirts of a city is usually straightforward enough but beyond that can be a nightmare. These cities are very old and the oldest parts can have very narrow streets - e.g. Barrio Santa Cruz in Seville. We had a taxi driver lost in Albayzin in Granada. And Malaga remains (relatively speaking) a nightmare, to be avoided wherever possible.

Liz, that why we ALWAYS use a GPS when we are traveling in the EU. And that is why many people plug their route into their GPS, and review it, prior to their trip. I also make/take a small map of the route that I am going to take to get to my hotel. And I only chose Ric Pics where he told us where the adjacent parking is located. With the advent of Google Earth/ Google Street View, I pull up the address, and "walk up and down the street", so I have a visual of the area. In fact, I prefer to rent places that I can review with Google Street View. Yep, trying to drive into the center of those old cities is not easy if you have not previously reviewed/mapped out the location of your lodging. But driving up to the door of your lodging sure beats schleping your luggage up and down stairs, thru lobbies, and transfering from trains to buses, cabs, etc.. When my Mom was in her eighties we took her on trips. She had limited mobility. We found it much easier to study/prepare for driving our route, than drag her thru transportation connections.

We witnessed a huge fight between a couple (American) trying to navigate the historic center of Cordoba in a small SUV-size car, using GPS. It had led them down a street so narrow the pedestrians (like us) had to find a doorway to duck into to let them pass. It was during the Patio Festival and there were lots of pedestrians about. She was crying and screaming, and he just kept pointing at the GPS. There was nothing they could do buy keep going ahead through the maze of streets and all the people, and hope for the best. I hope they found their hotel and their marriage survived. For someone with limited mobility, I would think the best option, especially for Sevilla, Cordoba and Granada, would be to travel by train (very comfortable), book a hotel right smack in the historic center, and take a taxi from the train station to the hotel, and from the hotel to sites that are too far away for her to walk (like the alhambra in Granada). The train between Barcelona and Madrid is also much faster than a car, as it travels at 300kph.

If you rent a car, don't forget your International Driving Permit. You can obtain it a a AAA office or visit their web-site for one close by. To go from city to city the train is great. I hope your starting your trip in Barcelona, train or car is a long haul to go from Madrid (MAD) to Barcelona (BCN) then back through Madrid to go to Cordova. In a car it is seven to eight hours each way. Plus you have tolls and fuel to consider. A Diesel automobile is your best bet, gasoline is much more expensive and doesn't get the great gas milage as Diesel. Parking is a pain in the A$%, expensive, usually underground with no elevator to get to the street level. Europe is not very handicap friendly.
In most of these cities you have a Hop On Hop Off, which might not be the most efficient way to get around, but with limited mobility it might be the way to go. The Ho Ho usually gets a lot of criticism because it always goes around the same loop, gets stuck in traffic, so you can waste a lot of time and in some cities like seville, it doesn't come close to most of the sites. but in large cities like BCN and MAD it stops at al the major sites or pretty close. In BCN get the HO HO with the large eye in the front, it has more routes and is more frequent. Combine it with taxis in the cities and you might be able to pull it off, with the least amount of problems. Your on vacation take your time and enjoy, it's imposible to see and experience everything.

Web-sites for Hop on Hop off (copy paste them) http://www.barcelona-bus-turistic.com/ http://www.gomadrid.com/madrid-vision/ http://www.city-sightseeing.com/tours/spain/seville.htm#tourlandingposition http://www.city-sightseeing.com/tours/spain/granada.htm#tourlandingposition Sorry your on your own in Cordoba, but check Andalucia tourism web-sites.