Help plan my Spain Itinerary

Hi Logan,

What types of things are you interested in? Museums, nightlife, beaches, big towns, little towns...?

We like going to museums, and we love to go out and eat. We also enjoy doing outdoor activities. We definelty want to spend time in Sevilla and Barcelona, but we don't know how many days we should spend in each or if we should go somewhere else in between the 2. Thanks for the help!

You should start by looking at several good guidebooks to get an idea of what's out there - make a list of the places and things that interest you in the general area that you will be visiting. Once you plot them on a map you'll have a better idea of how to divide your time.

It's really a tough call, as I think you are about one full day shy of being able to comfortably squeeze in a different location between the two. Also, you say 7 days but are they 7 full days, not including travel to/from Spain?

There are enough day trip options out of Seville and Barcelona to keep you occupied if you stayed, say, 3 days Seville, 4 days BCN. Seville day trips include Cordoba, other nearby Andalucian towns, etc., while BCN has Montserrat, Figueres, etc. I also understand there is some nice hiking to be had in Catalonia, but don't know any specifics (saw some posts recently on TripAdvisor).

I hesitate suggesting trying to see the Alhambra in Granada or stopping in Madrid for their world class museums, only because your itinerary would start to get overly-ambitious.

However, if you were planning on taking the AVE to BCN, and since it will go through Madrid, conceivably you could stop for 2 nights for a highlights tour. But you may find yourselves shortchanging Seville and BCN in the process (and, subsequently, the entire trip might become a highlights tour).

A lot of it boils down to how aggressive you want to be and how interesting the day trip options sound to you. Like Nancy said, start with a list of things you'd like to see then maybe come back to us for opinions on specifics. Some tough decisions for sure!

(PS Welcome to the Helpline!)

I tend to agree that this could turn out to be a "highlights" tour...but I would hesitate to suggest you leave out Madrid, since it is such a wonderful city. You have much to experience in Spain, so you may want to consider this a highlights tour anyway....2 days each in Sevilla, Madrid (with a stop in Cordoba along the way) and Barcelona...then plan to come back and do a more in-depth visit in the future.

Here's a link, Logan, to our 8-night tour of Spain last December, with considerable detail. Hope you find something helpful there: http://moltogentileitalia.blogspot.com/2009/04/week-in-espana-itinerary-barcelona.html

Here's a second link to a Report from Spain, based on our trip: http://moltogentileitalia.blogspot.com/2009/01/report-from-spain.html

Good luck!

Thank you all for helping me out. So, what I think we are going to do is just do four nights in Seville and four nights in Barcelona. That way, we can do day trips, and not have to worry about traveling so much. And we plan on just flying to BCN from Seville as it is relatively cheap to do and we will save time also. Thanks again!

If you like museums and eating out, Madrid is a better choice than Barcelona.

I think Sevilla and Barcelona will do you well. I loved both cities; also, something about Barcelona reminds me of NOLA. It's got that same free spirited, unique feeling, at least to me.

If you wanted to spend part of one day in Madrid, you can jump off the AVE from Sevilla (about 2.5 hours to Madrid), check your bags, spend five or six hours in the city (Puerta del Sol, the Prado, Palacio Real, and lunch or dinner) and the take the AVE on to Barcelona. Having visited both cities, I agree completely with your choice of Barcelona as a stay over Madrid--but, still, would be a shame not to see ANY of the capital city.

We stayed in Sevilla and took day trips to Cordoba and to Rhonda. I'd highly suggest both.