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France and Spain 2018

Spent 4 days in Paris and 17 in Spain (San Sebastian, Madrid, Toledo, Granada, Ronda, Tarifa, Sevilla and Barcelona.
Trip was fantastic - used Rick Steves' Spain 2018 for planning and the hotel choices were great.
Wanted to update on a few things we encountered:

1.Paris is pass is great - but at the Musee D'Orsay - the non ticket line moved MUCH faster than the ticket line - not sure why - but they were allowing groups to go to the front of the line of people with tickets. Once the non-ticket people got their tickets - they went right in - did not have to come over to the ticket line.
2. Versailles - the line to get tickets was very short - the line with tickets - 45 minutes to 1 hour - +25 Celsius - and inside was jammed.
3. Bus terminal in Algeciras is right across the street from the train station - not 3 blocks away.
4. When on the ferry to Tangier - get your Moroccan stamp right away - the line up was still there when we were docking and we spent at least 30 minutes in line.
5. Lastly - La Sagrada Familia - Rick's book seems to indicate that you can wait in line and get tickets - 45 minutes or so - they must have recently changed things b/c we were told at the church that you had to have an assigned time and must book on line - since we were there for 3 days we thought we would be ok - nope - the site was sold out for the next four days - we went on line to the secondary sellers - they were all sold out as well - lesson - book on line well in advance - same for the Alhambra - book at least 3 months in advance!

Overall - loved Spain - no real problems and even with the heavy rains the week before we got there - the buses and trains were all running. Can't wait to go back!

GP

Posted by
28065 posts

Gus, thank you for your report. It's very useful to have current info like that. I'm surprised and sorry to hear that La Sagrada Familia has become so much harder to visit just since I was in Barcelona in August 2016. At that time I was told (accurately, in my experience) that I should get my ticket 48 hours in advance if I wanted to be absolutely sure of the first time-slot, but that 24 hours ahead would otherwise be OK. I'm pretty sure that on most days you could show up in the morning and buy a ticket for much later in the day. So what you encountered is quite a change in just two years.

This information is so critical that I'm going to post a link to this thread in the regular Spain forum.