For those of you who have taken the Best of Spain tour can you provide feedback on your tour experience? I'm also interested in learning about the group meals (where and what did you eat) , hotels (cleanliness, proximity to center of town, etc.) , and what sites did you visit?
The tour description does not provide much detail
Thank you
Did you click the "reviews" tab under the tour? Those are all from people who took the tour. Or you can search the forum for trip reports/summaries to answer your questions.
na, I was on the wonderful Best of Spain Tour in spring of 2016, one of my favorites. As I remember, the hotels themselves ranged from good to superb, certainly no complaints. All were centrally located for exploring their cities, except for the absolutely lovely hotel in the countryside outside Ronda, where we spent one night, had a great dinner, breakfast and late morning departure. I guess that was our “vacation from the vacation.” The food in Spain is wonderful. My memory is that the group meals were generally very good, although it can be a challenge for many restaurants to produce and serve a great meal to 25-30 people. Of course, the hotels can vary from tour to tour, and I believe each guide has some control in choosing restaurants during their tours.
Larry - thank you for the info
Ebone - thank you. I was just hoping for a bit more info as the 'reviews' seemed to show only a sentence or two by each person. I'll go back and see if any of the older reviews have more details
Dig through the various scrapbooks, should definitely give you an idea of what to expect: Home / Our Tours / Scrapbooks / Tour Alum Scrapbooks.
Here is a better link: https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/scrapbooks/tour-alum-scrapbooks.
Thank you Ed - will search this link now :)
This was a great tour. If we had to do it over again we’d have arrived earlier to spend a few more days in Barcelona-lot’s to see and do. But recently there has been an uptick in crime and the pickpockets there are quite skilled. We saw and did much on this tour. I’m surprised you say the tour description does not proved much debatable. Have you clicked on the itinerary? As another poster has mentioned Ronda was our down time, which we needed. Wine was included with meals (not always on RS tours). We stayed in Sevilla a few days and did a side trip to Córdoba. Seeing the Mezquita was our wow o moment and it wasn’t part of the tour! Brush up on your Spanish. As you will see there is less English spoken in Spain than most Western European countries.
We took this tour in 2018 and loved it. Definitely plan more days in Barcelona before you start the tour as very little is seen of the city on the actual days of the tour. Best of Spain is a wonderful overview of the country with many different kinds of experiences included. We arrived four nights before the tour started in Barcelona and stayed two nights extra in Seville after the tour was over. Seville was our absolute favorite because of the beauty of the city, the smaller size and great weather. Highly recommend this tour!
I took this tour last month and enjoyed it very much -- guides, hotels, food, companions, and of course all we saw and did in Spain.
Barcelona deserves more time than the tour provides, which is why several of us came early. Our hotel was the Catalonia Puerta de l'Angel, right off Placa de Catalunya, very nice and ideally located for sightseeing. The demonstrations nearby were definitely noticeable but didn't cause any major changes in our tour as far as I could tell. In Madrid we stayed at the Europa, right on Puerta del Sol. The Toledo hotel was the Eurico, just dowhill from the cathedral. The Granada hotel was the Anacapri, between the cathedral and Plaza Nuevo. Outside Ronda we stayed at the Molina del Arco, the rural hotel another poster described above. In Arcos de la Frontera we were split between two smaller places, El Convento and Casa Grande, both with stunning views of the valley. And in Sevilla we were at the Amadeus in Barrio Santa Cruz. All the hotels were fine and very well located. While the tours use many different hotels, I expect they are all fine.
Our group meals were in various restaurants and all but one were excellent. The one I thought subpar was in Granada with a great view of the Alhambra, so there was a compensatory benefit.
The itinerary was well designed and paced, I thought, and the description on the website is accurate. The tour didn't include Cordoba, but some of us stayed longer in Sevilla and went there on our own, which I'd strongly recommend. I hope this post is helpful, and I can try to help answer any more specific questions you might have.
Alan - Luv2Travel - Dick - thank you all for your feedback
