We are planning for a 2-3 week spring vacation for Spain and Portugal, probably in May. Definitely want to spend some time in Barcelona then maybe a train/car combination along the coast down towards Gibraltar-Tarifa area to do a day trip to Morocco (I’m under the impression there’s a ferry at Tarifa). Then, I’m not sure, scoot over to Lisbon or something.
Any travel planning, hotel or sight seeing tips would be appreciated.
The Spanish coast was nice when I did it 30 years ago, but I’m sure things are much more expensive now. I lived in Lisbon for two years in the 90s, so am more familiar with that. It’s worth visiting, as it is very much an old-Europe type of city, even though it was completely rebuilt after the big earthquake and fire in 1755. There is a lot of old Pombaline architecture still in the city. Lisbon is charming with its hills and narrow streets and trams. The old section of Alfama is an interesting place to explore, sprawling down the hillside below Sao Jorge castle. Also visit the Bairro Alto section, which is famous for its fado bars and restaurants.
We spent a wonderful time in Tavira, the beach is superb (reached by a quick ferry ride) and the town is un-touristy and interesting.
If you like fish, the fish-market there is a must. We rented a villa and had a huge barbie with about 10 euros worth of the freshest seafood ever. Simple and wonderful and more than we could eat, though we forced ourselves.
We also had a night in a hotel overlooking Faro marina, also very nice.
In Barcelona (any port city – cliches are true) watch your wallet, etc. Street crime (pickpocketing, hookers) is really bad, esp. in tourist areas. Make some time for the Costa Brava and Catalonian countryside. Try to make it to Montserrat.
Valencia’s lovely. Benidorm and Ibiza are crap unless you want Eurotrash.
Eat! If you like high-end stuff, we found the one-star Michelin places far better and more affordable than some one-star places in France or elsewhere. If more casual, the tapas are great and so is the wine.
I’m an American living in Madrid.
While I prefer the north of Spain (Austurias, Cantabria, Basque Country and Navarra) I’ll leave that aside in favor of what most tourists go for.
Barcelona - Several days to enjoy the city and night life and Costa Brava beaches
One day trip to visit the towns of Girona and Figueres (which has an incredible Salvador Dali museum)
Another day trip to see Montserrat.
Trying to drive around the coast down to Tarifa sounds pretty unworkable to me (and rather dreary too - it’s not exactly the most beautiful coast drive). Spain is mostly laid out in a spiderweb where all points interconnect in the center at Madrid. If you are headed south, heading in to Madrid is the best way to get there.
So take the high-speed train to Madrid. You’ll get there in just three hours. I don’t know if you’re an art buff but Madrid has world class museums. You should at least see Picasso’s Guernica at the Reina Sofia Museum. The Retiro park is a wonderful afternoon’s visit on a spring day in May. And there’s plenty more, so a day stayover in Madrid is definitely worth your while.
From Madrid you should then hit the high points of Andalusia. That’s Granada, Cordoba, Ronda, and Sevilla. All are must-sees. Jump down to Morocco from there if you wish.
Another poster recommended Tavira, which is a small fishing town due west of Sevilla on the other side of the border with Portugal. Quaint town and lovely beaches. Cheaper than Spain too.
From Tavira, I’d drive west along the south coast of Portugal and then up to Lisbon.
Lisbon’s amazing, it’s like a cross between San Francisco and Paris. I’d especially recommend the trolley car rides, the Gulbenkian museum, and the cloisters at the Monastery of Jeronimos. You must visit the unique and world famous Bar Pavilhao Chinese (R. Dom Pedro V 89) in the Barrio Alto. It’s filled with knick-knacks and curios. For restaurants, make a reservation (and a reservation is a must) for Resto (Rua Costa do Castelo 7) up in the Alfama, with incredible views of the city and fine food.
Then schedule a day trip to Sintra, with its fairy-tale castles. Entrance is a little pricey, but worth every penny.
For more specific advice it would help to know your tastes in travel. But that’s all for now. Have fun!
Hey, I lived right across the street from that place at 76 (if memory serves)! They really do have quite a collection. There was a great bakery a couple of doors down from there and a little grocery on the corner run by an unapologetic drunk. Also a tile store right next door to us.
If one visits Jeronimos, right down the street from the monastery is the most famous bake shop in Lisbon, if not in all Portugal, where they make pasteis de Belem (a puff pastry heaped with custard and browned on top: the Portuguese version of a creme brulee.
Nitpick: it’s Bairro Alto, not Barrio Alto. The wacky Portuguese language, doncha know.
It’s been a few years since I’ve been but…
this is is something you might want to double check. At that time only EU passports could go through Tarifa; the rest of us schlubs had to go to Algeciras by Gib. We took an overnight tour - if you’re doing three weeks I think it’s worth looking into a ferry/hotel package; Tangier was neat to my naive eyes because it doesn’t cost to look. 
A friend of mine was stationed in Rota on his twilight tour at the time and I loved every second I was there. His flat was in the old part of the city next to the castle and cathedral (just across the street from this rather nice hotel). We toured quite a bit - can’t recommend the Allhambra or Mezquita enough, for example - but, for me, the best part was walking til I got tired then looking for a restaurant with an umbrella or something and eating whatever I pointed at on the menu. I really liked that part of Spain, a lot more than Sevilla or other points north. I think the Atlantic coast is kind of thrown over for the Med which is too bad, but it leaves for a less-frenetic quiet on the ocean side of the country.
I just have to second this advice (I am not too much of a foodie, but I think I know a bit about great food) and ask you to PLEASE not overlook the random hole-in-the-wall tapas joints.
I spent a month in Spain a few years back (Barcelona, Girona, Madrid) and some of the most amazing meals I enjoyed were had in nondescript little joints that I just happened into.
You do NOT need to spend a fortune in Spain to eat (and drink) like a king, and locals seem to do just fine without breaking the bank.
And in an attempt to belabor this point, by some absurd coincidence some ticky-tacky relatives of mine took a ticky-tacky guided tour to some ticky-tacky little resort area where they got to eat on tickets. Seriously. The tour told them where to eat and when and they hated everything they put in their mouths. I came back raving about tender beef and beautiful seafood and they were eating low-rent Holiday Inn food.
Don’t be like my relatives. Be brave. You’ll come out ahead.
This was true in March '09, when we went from Tangiers to Algeceiras, which is a bus ride (and a short stroll across the border and (no joke) the airport runway) from Gibraltar. As Americans, we couldn’t go through Tarifa. Also, it’s more than a day trip - allot at least an overnight for it. Tangiers is beautiful, but we found the salespeople offputting. Elsewhere in Morocco, they’ll shout to you as you walk past their store, perhaps try to give you a menu as you go past their restaurant, but if you keep walking, they’ll leave you alone. In Tangiers, they follow you up the street. It’s a bit much. That said, if you want to splurge a bit, we stayed in the gorgeous Dar Nour, which I’d highly recommend. We got an insane deal by showing up at 8 pm, bargaining, and getting the last room they had (linked above) for 800 dirhams ($100) rather than 1300.
We were only in Spain briefly, although we did have a lovely weekend in Gibraltar. Go there for a day trip if you’re in the neighborhood, hike the Rock, and enjoy England, with Spanish architecture. (It happens to have the nicest, most welcoming Orthodox Jewish community either of us had ever been to in our entire lives, anywhere in the world, but that’s probably of less interest to you.)
Thanks for the answers so far, guys. I will definitely look into the passport issue for crossing at Tarifa. As it happens, my GF has a French passport, but all I’ve got is the trusty Canadian one.
And I have no fear of hole in the wall type places as long as they don’t look certain to poison me. 
Any more specific suggestions along those lines works for me.
I’ll take your traveling to advice seriously, Negative Lite. Perhaps we’ll travel by train through Madrid down to the Tarifa area and drive to Portugal from there. I know that we are going to want a car of our own for part of this trip regardless. Neither of us are much the guided tour type so it’s nice to be able to strike out on your own when you feel like it.
To be more specific about what we’re looking for, just the basic soak up the local culture. Any music, wine, festival, neighborhoods suggestions would be good. We’re pretty definitely going to the south end and then over to Portugal.
I’ll get my girlfriend to look at the thread tomorrow and see what strikes her. Thanks again.
Webpage for the Portuguese train company, in English.
Webpage for the Spanish train company Renfe, which hasn’t really bothered with an English version (in theory they have, but they have only translated a bit and as soon as you select a route, it reverst).
Eurail visitor passes includes an option covering Portugal+Spain.
For some previous threads on Barcelona, this thread has some information and links to previous ones. Both matt_mcl and myself tend to pop up in these threads.
Often you will find that cercanías/rodalies are about as fast as the fast trains: the main difference is in the comfort level and the routes. There are trains from Barcelona to Valencia (an eminently visitable city - oh wait… oh, good, you won’t be there for Fallas; Fallas are great if you like them but every hotel within 200km is full), I suggest spending at least two nights there. The lonja (central market) is a rare example of civil gothic; the main train station itself is Modernista; the Ciudad de las Ciencias is both ultra-dupa-modern and, if you like science museums, quite cool (as well as cool in the temperature sense, which in May can be a plus).
From Valencia you can either continue down the coast or go to [del]the spider’s lair[/del] Madrid, perhaps with a stopover in little, tranquil, pretty Cuenca. The sight of the river gorge from the “hung houses” containing the Modern Art Museum is not for the faint hearted.
Two inland Andalusian cities which you may want to consider (I’m not familiar with either the coast or the Andalusian capital, Sevilla):
If you plan on stopping in Granada, take into account that tickets for the Alhambra MUST be purchased IN ADVANCE. As in, way in advance, not the day before.
I was in Córdoba last May: it’s time for the local Feria, definitely worth a visit. It’s less famous than Sevilla’s, but also a lot more visitor-friendly. We went to visit Medina Azahara, there’s a guy in a roulotte outside selling drinks. He told us it was the best time to visit, as it “hasn’t gotten too hot yet.” When we pointed out that the previous day had hit 40C, he laughed and said “well, yeah, but only for two hours, see?” Ah yes. We did, indeed, see.
I always forget: a great way to eat relatively cheap, although following the Spanish custom of having a relatively heavy lunch and light dinner, is “Menú del día,” a short menu whose items are already cooked (so, less waiting time) and, if applicable, the ingredients are fresh. If you’re asked whether you’ll be asking “from the menu”, make sure to say “from menú del día” - otherwise they may give you the regular menu.
And for most things you’ll find that a good rule of thumb is “normal time plus two.” In other countries, people eat between noon and 2pm: in Spain, between 2pm and 4pm. Movie times? The same. Dinner times? The same. Usual opening time for museums and stores-other-than-supermarkets? 10am.
No matter how many days you spend in Barcelona, it won’t be enough. Especially if you’re a fan of Gaudí’s architecture. It’s one of my favorite European cities.
And I was surprised by how much I loved Seville. It’s a really charming town with much going on.
Salads: dressings are very, very uncommon in Spain. Normally if you get a salad you’ll also get the olive oil, salt and vinegar so you can add them to taste. You may need to ask for pepper, as it’s less common. The basic ensalada is just salad and tomato (maybe onion); ensalada mixta is salad, tomato, black olives, onion, hard-boiled egg and canned tuna. Ensalada del chef or ensalada de la casa, you’ll have to ask. Ensalada aragonesa is pasta and chorizo, no vitamins to be found.
otra vez.
Best restaurant meal I had in Spain was “We’re too hungry to walk any farther, so we’ll eat at this random cafe with the construction workers eating there”
Also, my advice is to try and avoid having a car when you’re in the cities. It’s a hassle driving and parking, and you’ll see the city better by walking or taking buses (and seeing the residents on the bus) than by driving around in a box. And for long distances, the train will be much more pleasant than driving (and you’ll see more from the train than you will from a major highway).
One plan would be something like, fly in to Barca, after a couple days train to Madrid, a couple days later train to, say, Granada, then, only when you’re leaving Granada, pick up a rental car and drive to the Atlantic coast, looking at the countryside. Drive back to somewhere you can drop off the car and take a train back to Madrid to fly out.
When looking for places to stay, make sure to consider one of the Paradores. We stayed in one in Carmona (outside Sevilla) that was amazing. Modern, comfortable hotel on the inside (still retaining historical charm) and 14th century fortress on the outside. Supposedly you can travel all of Spain and hit a Parador each night.
If you want to try an authentic Portuguese dish, order anything with the word “bacalhao” in the name. Just be prepared for a lot of salt and some odd combinations.
Try Sevilla. Antother one of the royal cities. The cathedral and the Alcazar palace are amazing.
In Portugal they are called posadas. These are most often converted monasteries and manor houses and can be found throughout Portugal.
Several people have said you can eat well just about anywhere in Spain. While that may be true in Barcelona and the north, I’ve found that restaurant food quality gets increasingly worse the further south you go. The center of Madrid is pretty hit or miss and, in my experience, Andalusia is mostly just plain “miss” (with exceptions).
Take note of what Nava mentioned about the hours here. In Spain everything runs two hours later and most restaurants don’t even open before 1:30 for lunch or 8:30 for dinner. Portugal has more normal hours.
No reason to tip, ever. Just leave a few dimes. Leave nothing if you’ve only had drinks. Never ever ever leave more than 5%.
In general, Spain has excellent public transportation. One frustrating thing is that it’s very hard to get to Portugal by bus or train! That’s why I’d recommend you grab a rental car in Sevilla and drive into Portugal.
I’m going to recommend you visit one small town that someone else mentioned and that’s Carmona. It’s about twenty minutes east of Sevilla. The town’s walls still stand and you can go up on the ramparts above the town gate. Every house has a lovely tiled entrance, so it makes for a nice little stroll. The Parador is beautiful. The town also has an ancient necropolis which I didn’t get a chance to visit. After you get your rental car you can make a quick jaunt there before turning round to Portugal.
If you haven’t driven in Europe before, you should strongly consider getting a GPS in your car. The Spanish concept of signage is … confusing. Most highways are labeled according to their ultimate destination, so if you see a sign for Cordoba and you don’t know if Cordoba is north south east or west, you’ll quickly lose any and all sense of where you are or are going.
Let me know when you’ve settled on a general itinerary and I can give you more specific recommendations for each city.
Hasta la proxima.