Our daughter is studying in Caceres for the semester. We will visit during her spring break, which is holy week. I now see it's the worst time to travel. We will arrive in Madrid on April 14 and leave from Madrid on April 25. I have a hotel in Madrid from the 14th-17th and Barcelona from 21st-23rd. We also want to see Caceres, and possibly Toledo, Salamanca, Segovia, and Avila in the middle of this trip (17-21). Hindsight is 20/20 when I realize we should have purchased our flight out of Barcelona maybe. Any help on the middle of the trip (buses, trains, time allotted to each town) would be greatly appreciated. Hope this makes sense and yes, we are most definitely first timers at this. Thanks for ANY advice in advance.
Posted by
Salem, Oregon, USA
2728 posts
See other posts under the "Transportation" board about buying AVE train tickets - you'll want to buy your Madrid-Barcelona-Madrid tickets as soon as you can due to the holidays. You may already be out of luck for hotels in the smaller towns because of the holidays, especially the weekends. You might consider day trips from Madrid as a base if your hotel can cover you the 17th-21st. Things will be busy, but also what a treat to be there during what will likely be very festive time.
Posted by
OP
Sioux City, IA, USA
10 posts
Thank you for this advice. I am currently checking the transportation section. Do you usually buy from Renfe? I see that if I am going to do that, it is going to be a complicated process. I cannot figure out how to get that site to show me a round trip price. Any advice? I'll keep searching the other section in the mean time.
Posted by
Dreaming of my next trip to Europe
273 posts
I know people have been able to use the renfe site, I couldn't get it to work. Petrabax which is a US travel agency can get the tickets for you. They charge a small fee but for me it was worth it. http://petrabax.com/renfe/
Posted by
Bellevue, WA, USA
811 posts
most places you listed are linked by bus or train. i think segovia is better with bus, but other places are easy to get to with train. you don't have to buy ticket over internet. i found getting it in person, 1 or 2 days ahead is good enough. the ticket office speaks english so they can sort out your schedule with you and make recommendations.
Posted by
OP
Sioux City, IA, USA
10 posts
Thank you all so much. We reserved rooms in Toledo for the middle part of the trip...thank goodness! and will buy our train tickets when we are there. We are still trying to get the big train ticket to Barcelona reserved however. Thanks again for all of the friendly help here!
Posted by
Salem, Oregon, USA
2728 posts
Yes, use the RENEFE site. Call your credit card company BEFORE you buy online and tell them you're going to make an overseas charge. Then, before you actually try to buy tickets, read all the instructions on this web page:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187514-c80518/Madrid:Spain:Buying.Renfe.Tickets.Online..html It worked for me.
Posted by
OP
Sioux City, IA, USA
10 posts
CL and everyone...thanks again! I am printing the tickets as we speak. It was tough for a while and I made a lot of mistakes (like forgetting to put in that there are four of us...having to go back and re-do it). Not the most user friendly site, but not un-doable at all! I did call my card company the day before and still had to verify the card when it went through on Renfe (just an extra window asking some information). The TripAdvisor site was extremely helpful and I would recommend using it to anyone. Another thing I did was have the Google Translator site open in another window so I could pop in anything that looked important but wasn't clear to me. I had a message that said I had timed out (imagine that) and a couple of other times I did something wrong. Everyone is so helpful here. I had felt paralyzed... putting off so much of the planning for this trip...but the friendly help I have received here has been outstanding! Thanks !