I have tried to limit the itinerary with longer stays in fewer places. When we travel like this we tend to hit a wall at about the one-week mark, so I’d like to head that off by not planning a trip where we have to run like hell to see everything.
That said, I think we’re going to make a day trip of Cordoba on our way south from Madrid to Seville. I also think we’re going to do Jerez as a day trip instead of staying the night, since I’d like to avoid one-night stays as much as possible. The original plan was to return to Seville for a fourth night and then leave for Grenada the next morning, but I think I’m going to leave it loose for that night and the next night so we have options: a.) add Ronda to the trip if we’re feeling gung-ho and want to see more awesomeness, b.) head down to the beach somewhere to chill out if we need to just take a load off at that point, c.) go on with the original plan, or d.) whatever else sounds cool at the time.
Thanks to everybody for their suggestions. A few random questions:
–Any particular guidebooks anyone found useful? I have the Rick Steves book; he gets a lot of crap on various travel forums, but I think it’s mostly because he doesn’t make any attempt to be comprehensive, which seems like more feature than bug. I used his book in Italy and thought all of his recommendations were exactly as advertised. But it also helped to have a more comprehensive book along–namely the Lonely Planet book.
–If it can be generalized, how do the people of Spain react to less-than-great Spanish? For instance, in Italy people seemed to appreciate attempts to use my neanderthal-level Italian (rather than just yelling louder in English, I guess), but in Costa Rica people seemed annoyed by my Spanish, which really wasn’t that bad. (It was a hell of a lot better than my Italian had been.) My Spanish is a lot better now, but it’s still intermediate at best. Is the response more likely to be “Hey, this guy’s trying to learn my language. That’s cool.” or “Why is this asshole butchering my language?” Or is there a prevailing attitude?
–Has anyone bought a railpass for Spain? Was it worth it? There are probably four days when we’ll be on the trains. I’d be willing to pay a little extra for convenience, but since you have to make reservations anyway (not to mention upcharges for the AVE trains) they seem like particularly bad deals.
For the second question, people love it when foreigners make any kind of attempt at speaking Spanish. Being unable to say a word of Spanish is ok too, so long as people aren’t arrogant about it (I have been approached by an Ancient Overpainted American Mummy on Rambla Catalunya, demanding “you! do you speak my language?” and almost answered “actually, no I don’t” - in English in the original, of course).
For the third, add up individual costs and compare. It will be worth it or not depending on the individual case. Even with the upcharges you may find out that the cost of pass+surcharges is lower than the cost of the AVE tickets alone.
I like the Rick Steves books for the reason you mentioned but I havent seen his guide on Spain. My bible is the Rough Guide to Spain. I think it would make a nice “comprehensive” complement to the “condensed” Rick Steves.
If you’re into sherry, while in in Madrid, check out La Venencia, a cool old (very old) sherry bar.
Unfortunately, rail ticketing in Europe is extremely fragmented and disorganised. The EU recently abandoned an all-Europe ticketing and reservation system.
All I can say is, do not buy from raileurope.com, or other American agencies if you can avoid it. You will pay far more with them than you need to.
In general, European train seats become open for reservation 8 or 12 weeks in advance. There are usually some very cheap deals (varies by country): trains ticket like airlines these days, with very cheap advanced booking if you can specify your departure time, and high walk-up or flexible fares.
As a general rule advanced reservations cost a lot less than railpasses, which in turn cost less than using walk-up fares.
One site which has saved my bacon many times is www.seat61.com - the guy is a saint, and has hugely comprehensive by-country guides to rail travel. As he mentions, your best bet is to buy tickets in advance on the Spanish railways website.
As an example, I just bought two tickets on the TGV from Paris-Geneva, a 3.5 hour high-speed trip, for 20 euros each-- because I used the French national railways website, and booked far in advance.