Other day trips possibilities from Madrid, although the transportation is more expensive (fast train) would be Seville and Cordoba; there’s fast trains to Pamplona and Barcelona but the ones for Pamplona aren’t set to go M-P-M in the day plus the Pamplona station is in the boondocks; Barcelona isn’t a place to be seen in one day. And back to the cheap-day-trip-by-train, Cuenca (which most people miss and ok, it’s certainly not The World’s Party Capital, but it’s pretty and has some unique views) and Valencia (which used to compete with Ibiza for TWPC title and I much prefer to visit when it’s not being visited by the rest of the world, i.e., Fallas).
For Portugal, the two Must Visit places I always hear are Porto and Lisbon. Haven’t been, though.
www.renfe.es has an English Language section. It’s the Spanish train company; you can buy tickets in advance for long-distance trains, check timetables, and get special “traveler from abroad” tickets that let you take several trips in n days cheaper than people from the area.
Usually, the timetables for trains and buses complement each other, when traveling between the same two towns. Buses reach places that trains don’t. One disadvantage of buses is that a bus station can be harder to find than the train station; some towns have several of each. And there’s one national train company and several local ones, whereas for buses there’s a ton of them and it can be hard to find timetables on the web.
It’s perfectly safe to travel in the region, so long as you’ve got the brains to remember that if it looks like a bad part of town, it probably is. Since you don’t speak the language and most of us write it better than we speak it, it may be good to carry a small notebook and a pen; that way you can write addresses or names of places you want to visit and people can draw maps or write the directions.
If you like Modernismo (Gaudí kind of stuff), Barcelona has tons of it; Palencia (can be a day trip from Madrid) has a very-early-gothic cathedral, a very-large Romanic church (San Miguel) and a Main Street that went crazy about Modernismo.
Moving to the possibility of Barcelona as a “hub”, the city itself has enough material for months. You can take day trips to Sitges (more Modernismo, it’s a beach town but was an economic hub before beaches were discovered as a money maker), Tarragona (roman ruins, modernismo), to the Dali museum, to Girona (the inevitable Cathedral, the bridges, the Jewish baths). If you chance upon a trip to Besalú (behsahloo) take it: that town still manages to get my prize for Most Impressive Fortifications. That little town can be blanket-bombed, but only if your pilots are real good and your bombers have good aim…
A good money-saving invention is Menú del Día (I don’t know what’s the name in Portuguese but I imagine it exists there too). Many restaurants and bars offer this “special of the day” menu for lunch which includes two dishes and dessert, all chosen from lists of 3-4 options, water and bread included. Most places include one glass of red wine in this menu; some will also let you choose beer or soda for the same price, some will charge extra for wine, beer or soda. Tipping is neither required nor expected in Spain; if you find the service exceptional, leave some of your change as a tip, not a % of the bill.
In general: veggies, salads, rice, potatoes, pasta and beans are a “first dish”; meat or fish the “second dish”. Cheese, fruit, yoghurt, cake, pie: dessert.
Check out whether the hotels you’re staying in offer breakfast and how much it costs. Some places have the nerve to charge 20€ extra for the same coffee and a croissant that would cost 3€ or less in the nearest bar.
Large cities have public transportation (bus, subway); usually there’s some sort of 10-trip ticket that’s a lot cheaper than individual tickets.
In most towns there will be tourist information “shops” marked by a sign of a white i over blue. I expect hotels to be able to give out maps and stuff like that, but some manage to dissapoint. At least they should be able to point you to the nearest “turismo.”
PM or mail me if you have any more questions!
Nava, Spaniard in semi-exile 