How to get from the Madrid airport to Granada

Ma'am,

There are quite a few ways to do this trip. First you need to get from Barajas Airport in Madrid to the Estacion de Atocha Train terminal in the downtown city center. A taxi takes about thirty minutes depending on time and traffic. It costs around 25 Euro with no tip. By bus. The buses leave downstairs from the airport every thirty minutes, take about an hour or so, to get to Atocha Station. If you have a bunch of luggage, (I hope you do not), the taxis are the best. To get to Granada, there is no high speed train, so you have to take the regional train. The Spanish train website, renfe.es is a joke. Their schedules do not line up very well with reality at the train station. The regional train takes about 4 to 5 hours to Granada. I can't remember what I paid for a ticket. For hotels in Granada, go to eurocheapo.com, put in Granada, Spain, and then ativate the neighborhood filters on the lower left of the page. There are about a hundred inexpensive clean hotels in Granada. You can check prices easily on this website. I have never flown so I don't know if you can, but we were advised against it, because you had to fly then bus it for 90 minutes from a different town. Good Travels!!!

Actually, I've found the RENFE website schedules to be pretty accurate, once you're inside their 62 day general booking window. The only problem is, there are only two trains per day to Granada....as the earlier poster noted, they're both regional trains, so the run will take you about 4.5 hours.
Another alternative would be the bus. It takes about 5 hours, with a rest stop about halfway along. Magnificent scenery across the plains of La Mancha, then into the mountains. You'd leave from the big bus station at Avenida America in the south end of Madrid (the airport's in the northeast corner) at a cost of about 17 Euro per person, less than half the price of the train ticket.
Another option would be to get your airline to book your flight right thru to Malaga. Take the local commuter rail line to the main downtown train terminal, walk across the street to the bus depot, and take one of the 20 or so buses a day to Granada (about 2 hours...cost about 10 Euro pp.)
And a final option would be to fly. The discount airline Ryanair flies Madrid-Granada....the Granada airport is just west of the city, and there are bus connections and taxis. However, there is a drawback here. Because you will have two separate tickets, and you won't be "interlined," there's no obligation on either airline to make the connection. So if you are late and miss your Ryanair flight, you are out of luck. Ryanair flights usually leave fairly early in the morning for Granada, shortly after 6 a.m.....but that may be different on your travel dates. If you arrive at terminals 1, 2, and 3, it won't take you long to find the Ryanair counters in terminal 1. However, if you arrive at the new terminal 4 (Iberia), it'll take you an hour or so to get thru customs, pick up your baggage, and take the shuttle bus or a cab to the other side of the airport for T1, 2, and 3.

Your daughter's host family is in a nice residential area of Granada, on a double-laned street that contains a lot of apartment blocks and some offices. It's an "urban" residence rather than the suburbs, and is only about a 20 minute walk from Plaza Nueva, the center of Granada. You'll have to go into the Plaza Nueva/Albaycin area to get "authentic" hotels, or into the old Jewish quarter, which is a bit closer. To find out where prospective hotels are, go to maps.google.com and enter your daughter's address. Then go to the "Get Directions" feature and enter the address of the hotel. Use the "Walking" feature instead of "By Car" and you'll get a good idea of how far away you are.

Thanks so much for the info! It's SO helpful!

Sincerely,
Barb