Spain, Portugal, Southern France Help

Are we clear? You have near six months in 'Spain, Portugal, Southern France'?

Wow, did I mess up! Our trip is the month of March; March 3-30. Thank you for catching that.

Good that you cleared that up. You were in serious danger of being hit with a lot of advice about Schengen & visa rules!!

I am researching a trip to Spain and Portgual, and it seems like it is hard to get between the two countries by train. The best option for doing that appears to be a night train between Madrid and Lisbon. Then you're best bet is to fly if you are going between Barcelona or Southern France and Portgual, I'd imagine. Or you could visit Portugal by traveling north from Lisbon, and then I believe there is decent train access between Porto and Northern Spain, and you may be able to loop up to Barcelona that way. But I have not done the research on that, so others may be able to advise better.

We just got back from a 7 week trip starting in Portugal and ending in Barcelona, after a trip around southern Spain. From Madrid to Portugal then back to Barcelona seems like a bizarre way to take a trip. Have you checked a map of Spain? I would leave out Portugal, although we loved Lisbon, and take that trip another time, unless you plan to fly. Getting around Spain is no where near as easy as getting around Italy. We've never been to southern France, but I would bet it would be a great trip and I wouldn't miss Barcelona especially Gaudi's work.

I might be inclined to choose either southern France or Portugal, since you are starting in between the two. Plus a week is not much at all to cover what your tour covers. Madrid is good for four full days, even without counting the side trips which highly recommended (Toledo, El Escorial, Segovia). The Rick Steves itineraries for all of these countries/areas are great. We have traveled in all three countries using Rick's books.

Different families like to travel different ways. I'm puzzled that you have a week of escorted travel, and three weeks of independent travel, especially since the escorted part is for large cities where independent travel (in my experience) is a bit easier. This is not meant as a criticism, only to indicate that it's harder to give good advice that you can use. As you will see, Spain is a wonderful and varied place, where you could enjoy the entire month, if you choose to. Although we were in Portugal over ten years ago, I'd comment that it's slightly more effort to travel independently in Portugal than in Spain, although legions of people (many with Rick's books!) do so every year. I just mean it's harder to speak the Portuguese "courtesy words" and harder to read signs there. I'm tempted to say that fewer natives are comfortable in English in Portugal, but I'm sure that's improved since our visit. Here are a couple of posts from here that might be helpful. You can use the Search box to get some more: http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/77537/suggestions-for-northern-spain-and-portugal.html http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/65109/portugal.html

(Truncated by website, from previous post) http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/helpline/index.cfm/rurl/topic/103098/portugalspain-itinerary-help.html

Thanks to each of you for responding. We have another Monty's trip we are in the final stages of planning before we dive into this one and definitely use Rick Steve's info; we use pages from his books for where we go. This trip to Spain, Portugal and southern France has come about via a Travel Zoo alert of a Gate1 escorted trek from Madrid to Madrid. The $1,500 fare (plus the additional cost of flying from a regional airport) was too good of a deal since it included air fare. Our last trip to Europe "ran out" before we could include southern France so we added some time to include it and Portugal. A long-time travel agent friend (who does only customized group travel) also felt the escorted trip was a good deal and said that we likely could "do" Portugal in less than a week. Since Barcelona is nearer to where we want to visit in France we thought we would go there before France and then we would know how much time remains for there. Unless, of course, it would work better, as mentioned, for us to exit Portugal in the north and take trains across southern France, visiting Barcelona en route to Madrid for our return flight. We feel better, weather-wise being in the southern part of Spain and Portugal earlier in March (though the tragic train crash in northwestern Spain on the same day we booked was disconcerting). And we appreciate the tip about independent travel in Portugal. It's difficult not getting excited too early about this trip but some southwestern U. S. National Parks await us this fall!