Recommendations Wanted: Two Weeks in Spain

In My Humble Opinion
1

I got extremely good pointers here for a UK trip a couple of years ago, and just saw @puzzlegal 's thread about a quick trip to Barcelona (which I’m bookmarking), so I’m dipping in again for the collective travel wisdom of The Dopers.

My wife retired after 30+ years of high school teaching at the end of the last school year, and we are excited to be able to travel during the school year. We missed our window for a trip this Fall (son’s wedding, house refurbishing, yada yada), and are targeting late-February/early-March (pre-Spring Break) of next year for our first ever trip to Spain.

Length of trip will be approximately 2 weeks, and our general plan is to fly to southern Spain (probably into Malaga), bop around the southern cities (Granada, Valencia, Sevilla) for 6 days or so, go to Madrid and Toledo for 2 or 3 days, then go to Barcelona for the remainder of the trip, flying home from there. My wife is a really good online researcher, but we did a few things on the UK trip that we probably would’ve missed without all of your counsel. So, have at it–hidden gems, quirky museums, specific restaurants off the main tourist trail, good walks, tips for intercity train/bus travel, etc.

2

We were in Spain for 8 days back in 2007. One of my favorite stops was Segovia, which is a small city with a really impressive Roman aqueduct still standing.

Here is the Wiki article on it.

Since you’ll be in Grenada, assumedly you will visit Alhambra.

3

We took an overnight ferry to Mallorca from Barcelona. The ferry was nothing to talk about (it’s a ferry, nothing fancy and we slept most of the trip) but Mallorca was really nice if you want a bit of an island vacation R&R added to your vacation.

4

That’s a great start. Don’t miss the Alhambra and the Mesquita. Consider a day trip to Tangier and a day in Gibraltar.

Here’s what we did. Check times; definitely make reservations beforehand where you can. Have a wonderful trip!

Madrid

Madrid
Parque el Retiro

Madrid
Prado reservation

Toledo
Santa María la Blanca Open 10:00-18:45.
Transito Synagogue and Sephardic Jewish Museum
Toledo Cathedral
Buy tickets in shop across from entrance. Open Mon-Sat 10 – 18:30

Córdoba
[Excellent food options.]

Córdoba
Sinagoga & Jewish Quarter
Casa dev Sefarad 11:00 – 18:00 Fri and Sat. Across from synagogue

Córdoba
Mesquita Open Mon-Sat 8:30 – 14:00 & 16:00 -19:00

Granada

Granada
Alhambra w/ passports, reservation

Seville

Seville
See azulejos at Alfonso XIII hotel found between Alcazar St and the Cathedral
Cádiz

Tarifa

Tarifa
8 hr tour day trip to Tangier
Tangier Private Tour from Tarifa, Port of Tarifa, 11380 Tarifa, Lugo

Gibraltar
Bus LV Tarifa-> La Linea de la Concepcion (Gibraltar)
No reservations, buy tickets on Comes bus.
Rock of Gibraltar within walking distance

Gibraltar
Walk to airport from hotel
[Most hilarious airport/tarmac ever.]

5

I’ve only been to Barcelona and north of there. In the city, enjoy La Rambla, but don’t eat or drink there. Go off the main drag by one or two blocks and you’ll find locals in small squares with better food and lower prices. The Gaudi sites are impressive and amazing; we had a private guide for our day and I highly recommend it. She showed us lots of great little details and spent time tailoring the tour to our interests. The only place we went on our own was Park Guell, and we spent several hours there just wandering around. La Boqueria Market is wonderful and worth a visit, but there are lots of smaller markets scattered around the city just as interesting.

A day trip from Barcelona to Montserrat is easy and rewarding. It’s a simple train trip and an aerial tram ride to the monastery. From there you can take another tram up for some great hiking and views.

6

Make sure you spend a night in Ronda. It’s the most striking town in Southern Spain and is very walkable.

7

If you can be in Valencia for Las Fallas, 15-19 March, you will not regret it.

It is an amazing festival of fire and fireworks, with spectacular fireworks displays every night over the dry riverbed that has been converted to a park that runs through the city. Each night’s display is by a different company and has a completely different character from the others.

Throughout the year, each neighborhood builds large, elaborate, and colorful wood and papier-mache sculptures in their central square. Take a look at some of the other pictures in the Wikipedia entry linked above to get an idea of their variety and beauty.

At the end of the festival, they are all burned down.

Each day there are numerous parades of people and bands in ornate traditional costumes through the city.

I was in Valencia for Las Fallas 20-some years ago, and it is still one of the most amazing and memorable experiences of my life. Although I’m sure it’s well known in Europe, the fact that it isn’t more famous worldwide (I’ve never heard anything about it here in the States) is somewhat surprising to me.

My wife loves fireworks and I hope to take her there sometime in the next few years.

Even if you can’t be there for Las Fallas, Valencia is still eminently worth a visit. It has remarkable architecture, both old…

… and new.

8

I can only speak to Barcelona. It’s a beautiful city, with lots of nice touristy things to do, good food, and an excellent metro system. If you get there, i recommend you walk around the old part of the city (near la rambla), but don’t see any real reason to stop on that street. It’s a nice pedestrian mall with lots of little restaurants in the street. There are lots of interesting squares around it, with street buskers, shops, and interesting architecture. I didn’t make it to La Boqueria Market because it’s closed on Sunday, which is when i was nearby.

If you want to go to Sagrada Familia (you do) book tickets well in advance. It sells out up to two weeks in advance. We got tickets for 9am, right when it opens, and that was good, as it gets much more crowded as the day progresses. We bought a third party tour, which was nice but probably not worth the money (except that there were no tickets left from the venue itself, so that’s what i could buy.)

Park Guell also requires tickets (since covid) and sells out, but only a couple days in advance. I tried using the park’s app, but it was terrible, reloading slowly every time i opened it, and it never did connect to my GPS. Don’t waste the data to download it there. (Maybe try in advance over Wi-Fi, your luck may be better than mine.) It’s only okay as a park (although there are some underused picnic benches and it would be nice to eat lunch or supper there) but has a lot of oddball Gaudi architecture that’s fun to interact with.

The cable car ride to Mont Juic was fun, and the views from the top are spectacular. We booked a guided tour for that, and it was worth it. The guide gave a lot of history and local color. (Pepa, with in&out tours, not that i know of any way to pick a guide.)

My favorite was actually the day trip to Montserrat. Get the ticket to see the black Virgin if you have any interest in the “church” part of the event, as you see a lot more of the church with that ticket, even though you just file through it. The museum is small and eclectic and a lot of fun. The best part was going up to the higher level, and walking around on the stones up there. It’s really wild, and the views are spectacular.

I didn’t book a tour, i just bought a train ticket there and admission to the site. The aerial is more fun and faster than the cog railway. Buses are much faster than the train, but i didn’t want to be confined to a tour schedule, and I’m glad i had the extra time to wander around.

I also went to the Museum of Natural History, which i enjoyed. But if it hadn’t been literally across the street from our hotel, i don’t think it would have been worth it. They are telling us to stow electronic devices, so more later.

9

And catch a Flamenco show somewhere on your trip. They are great entertainment.

10

Ditto for the Alhambra - only, for “two weeks,” read “three months.”

11

FWIW we did Madrid, Barcelona and Seville (and Mallorca).

Seville was my favorite of the above (I liked it all though…Spain is easily one of my favorite places I have visited…lovely people and culture and food).

12

Oh, that’s good to know. Hoping it won’t be quite that bad if we’re there before mid-March, but I’ll plan to do that as soon as we book the flights.

13

Granada is a lovely place - more like one enormous village than a city - so many little lanes and streets to wander around, full of little bars, restaurants, cafes and interesting bazaar type shops.

Seville is spectacular architecturally, but maybe not quite so cosy as Granada - still lots to do there (although I have no specific recommendations).

One thing to be aware about in Spain (especially in the south) is: mealtimes. Breakfast is any time in the morning (and in some cases, there are two breakfasts - so like breakfast and elevenses). Lunch doesn’t really get going until about 2PM and it can go on all afternoon. Dinnertime is like 9PM onwards and it’s common for people to just go out before that and walk around in the evening, having drinks and tapas from maybe 7PM until it’s time to settle down for a meal. In Seville especially, the sheer number of people just wandering about the place at dusk, in families and groups, was phenomenal.
Of course you can get food outside of those times, but you’ll get better food if you eat when the locals eat.

We were in Granada for Easter week and it was just incredible - the place grinds to a halt as the streets are filled with spectacular religious processions, with marching bands playing music that will tear at your soul; this goes on every day for the week and in the evening, the crowds were the biggest gathering of people I have ever attended - all seeming very happy and good-natured, considering the scale of the event.

14

Another excursion from Barcelona that is worth it is Girona, a gorgeous Medieval walled city north of there.

Headed down from the wall for dinner, at sunset.
Imgur

15

There is a way around that: book a night in the Parador in the Alhambra itself. It is the most expensive of the whole hotel chain of Paradores, but if you book now it will cost under 400 € a night. I recommend booking two nights. The booking includes preferential access to the Alhambra and Generalife complex.
Check the paradores web site in general for other destinations too: great value for money in mostly remarcable historical locations, lovely preserved and restored. Ronda was recommended already, they have a lovely parador too. Same goes for Carmona, near Seville. Incredible place!
More recommendations later.

16

Over the last few years we’ve been to Spain quite a few times. A few thoughts.

Granada

Nobody has mentioned the Basílica de San Juan de Dios. I’m not religious, but I like a bit of ecclesiastical bling, and San Juan is second to none. Relics a-plenty and a magnificent building. Just great.

The Mirador de San Nicolás has a spectacular view across a valley to the Alhambra. And if you then walk down into the valley, you can walk through Sacromonte - see the wiki page. It’s really not a tourist thing, but it’s hellish interesting - modern day cave dwellers. I wouldn’t do it at night.

This was true 5 or 6 years ago, and I guess it’s true now: in Granada (uniquely amongst the cities we visited) if you get a drink in a bar, they’ll give you a random tapa as well. Careful with those post-dinner drinks.

Seville

We were there earlier this year, and there’s a new tapa in town - one which seems to be (for now) fairly specific to Seville: Tortilla with Whisky Sauce. It’s generally very good, but there’s a small bar, Casa Eme on C. Prta del Osario, where it’s out of this world. Just sayin’

A riverboat trip is worth doing.

Cordoba

The Mosque really is everything that it’s cracked up to be. Eye-popping. I really liked the Monumento Natural Sotos de la Albolafia as well - it’s a complex of islands in the river which attracts all sorts of birds.

Barcelona

Pretty much what everyone else said. All I’ll add is that there’s a really useful chain of cafes called 365. The snacks and the drinks are fine, it’s good value, and there aren’t many public toilets in Barcelona. Oh, and don’t refer to anyone as Spanish - they’re not. They’re Catalan.

Malaga

Nice enough, plus you can go along the coast by bus (east) or tram (west). but to be honest, if you’re time limited, I would prioritize other places higher.

j

17

I didn’t see where anybody mentioned Ronda, which is in the mountains near the south coast of Spain. If you’re going to be in the south, then it’s an easy drive. Very picturesque and famous for the old bridge that spans the gorge. Malaga is good, as is Torremolinos. In fact, a drive across southern Spain through the hilly country, stopping at the whitewashed villages is very relaxing. The cathedral at Seville is a must, and you can go to Jerez, which is famous for its sherry.

18

Personally, this seems a little rushed to me. Malaga, Granada, Seville and Cordoba are each worth 2+ days. I would spend a week to 9 days there, and then head to Valencia (again worth 2 to 3 days) on my way to Barcelona. If you try to fit Madrid and Toledo in the middle, you’re going to miss a lot of great things. Just my humble opinion.

19

I don’t doubt that you’re right.

Once we settle on the overall dates and the endpoint cities, we’ll adjust our ambitions, most likely. Spouse is retired, but I’m not (yet), and we have a dog that needs care arranged while we travel, so two weeks is about our limit for any one trip. We sometimes…overdo…our touristing–see, for example, the summary of our UK trip in the thread I linked in the OP–but what we’re thinking may be ambitious, even for us.

My personal excuse is that I’m going blind, don’t have much vision left, and want to take as much in while I still can. Hoping this won’t be our only trip to Spain, but we have to balance travel-for-fun with travel-for-family-stuff. Might be a couple of years before we get back to Europe, so we may have to sacrifice some depth for breadth.

After this one, we may switch to a couple of depth-over-breadth tours in Italy (where we’ve been a few times already). Looking at Liguria and Sicily for these.

Thanks for all the recs so far, everyone. Lots of good tips. Keep 'em coming. Editing this trip down to something doable is clearly going to be a nightmare :smiley:.