We have just returned from an amazing 2 week trip to Spain. My jetlagged self is up at a ridiculously early hour, so I’ll use the time to write up a trip report.
Who we are: 10 people traveling, 2 families; 4 parents and 6 kids ranging in age from 15 to 26. We’ve vacationed together before, in the US, and felt confident we could pull this off and still like each other at the end of the trip. We started talking about this adventure last spring and committed to plane tickets in June. Half the group works in healthcare and this was a desperately needed vacation, so we were in agreement that, as long as we felt we could do it safely, and as long as Spain would let us in, we would go. We are all fully vaxxed and boosted except for the 15-year-old, who will get his booster this week. He is also special needs and mobility-challenged, so we travel slower than most people.
Why we picked Spain: My family has been before, most recently in 2018. We knew we wanted a single country destination, and I knew it would be easy to make the trip arrangements and travel around. Spain’s Covid vaccination rate is among the highest in the world, and it has a tourist-friendly approach, so we felt that any new restrictions would likely still be welcoming for travelers. Plus, we had plenty of Spanish speakers in the group, we love the food, and we thought the culture would be a great fit for a relaxing vacation. All of these assumptions held true – we had a fantastic trip that exceeded expectations.
Where we went:
December 26: Fly Burlington, Vermont to Madrid and private transfer to Toledo
2 nights in Toledo
Private transfer (minibus) to Granada with stops in Consuegra and Baeza
4 nights in Granada, train to Cadiz
4 nights in Cadiz, train to Cordoba
1 night in Cordoba, train to Malaga
1 night in Malaga
January 8: Fly home Malaga to Burlington
We felt like this was a nice itinerary with a good mix. Cadiz was our favorite city; we could have stayed for a month and still enjoyed ourselves. In the end we were happy that we had seen so much, but in the future, we will try and avoid one night stopovers. We also as a group felt that 11 days would have been the sweet spot for the total trip length; 14 days was just a touch too long.
We did things as a group (all 10 of us) for most of the major sights and private tours, but much of the day we split off into smaller groups and went our own way. I think this is the only way for a group this size to have a good vacation – divide and conquer, do what you want, then get back together and celebrate what each of you did.
Transportation:
Flights: We purchased plane tickets in June for a lovely itinerary with great flight times, nice 3-hour layovers, and one stop each way. We then had 7 schedule changes, with the last one resulting in us landing at JFK after our connecting flight home departed. Thank you, Delta computer. Hoping for one last magic change in our favor (didn’t happen), I waited until after the third Saturday in November and then got on the phone with Delta. Three hours later, we had a new itinerary that was horrible but at least got us home. We wound up departing Burlington at 5:30 a.m., then a 13 hour layover at JFK, and then the overnight to Madrid, and our return home was Malaga (6:00 a.m. departure) to CDG to Atlanta to Burlington, total travel time home 24 hours. Ugh. But ultimately it all worked (even at CDG, where we had horrible, nasty, rude airport staff, incredible disorderly masses of people at passport control, almost missed our connection even with 2+ hours in the airport, never again), everything was on time, and we made it happen. And we got to spend some quality time in Terminal 4 at JFK (for the record, 13 hours is a looooonnnggg time). We took over one of the central lounge areas, brought games, and made the best of it.