By Citlali Quezada, Luxury Travel Advisor, Roseville Travel
Most ten-day Spain plans I am asked to look at try to include Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, Granada and San Sebastián. That is a country the size of California with five bases in ten days, and it does not work.
What makes Spain unusually forgiving is the AVE. The high-speed network is genuinely excellent — Madrid to Seville in about two and a half hours, Madrid to Barcelona in the same, Seville to Córdoba in forty-five minutes. Used properly it lets you have three bases and still see six places.
There are two ten-day routes worth building. Pick by what you actually want.
Route one: the classic south
Madrid, 3 nights. The Prado and the Reina Sofía — where Guernica hangs — are worth a morning each, not a combined afternoon. Evenings in La Latina or Huertas. Use one day for Toledo (33 minutes by train) or Segovia (28 minutes), both easy half-days.
Seville, 4 nights. The Real Alcázar needs a timed ticket booked ahead; so does the cathedral if you want the Giralda climb. Flamenco in Triana rather than a hotel show. From here, Córdoba is 45 minutes by AVE and the Mezquita justifies the trip on its own, and Granada is about three hours by train or bus.
If you want the Alhambra — and you should — book it the day your dates are firm. It sells out months in advance, entry to the Nasrid Palaces is by a fixed half-hour slot, and the fallback is an expensive tour bought in desperation.
Barcelona, 3 nights. Fly or take the AVE up. Sagrada Família and Park Güell are both timed entries. Leave an afternoon unplanned for the Gothic Quarter, which is the part people remember.
Route two: the north, and the food
This is the better trip for people who travel to eat, and almost nobody plans it.
Madrid, 3 nights, as above.
San Sebastián, 4 nights. The pintxos bars of the Parte Vieja are the reason to come. The method matters: you stand, you order one or two things and a small glass of txakoli, and you move to the next bar. The crawl is dinner — sitting down for a full meal in the old town misses the point entirely. La Viña's burnt cheesecake has been copied worldwide and is still better at the source.
From here, Bilbao and the Guggenheim are an hour away, Rioja is ninety minutes south, and Asador Etxebarri in the Atxondo valley is the great grill restaurant of Spain. Etxebarri, Arzak and Mugaritz all need reservations months ahead — tell us early and we will chase them.
Barcelona, 3 nights, to finish.
The mistake that ruins the first three nights
Spain eats late, and not by a little. Lunch runs from about 2pm to 4pm; dinner service starts around 9pm and runs to 11pm or later. Kitchens in most of the country are simply not open at 6:30.
Americans who fight this spend their first three evenings eating badly at tourist restaurants that serve early precisely because no Spaniard would eat there. The fix is easy: a real lunch at 2:30, something small at 6, dinner at 9. Two days in it stops feeling strange.
In smaller towns, shops and some sights still close for two or three hours in the afternoon. Plan the museum for the morning.
Two weeks to avoid unless you are going for them
Semana Santa — Holy Week — in Seville is one of the most extraordinary things in Europe and one of the hardest weeks to visit casually. The city is full, rates multiply, and processions close the streets you were planning to walk. Go deliberately, a year ahead, or pick different dates.
Feria de Abril, two weeks after Easter, does much the same thing to Seville for a second week.
Don't rent a car
For either of these routes you do not want one. City parking is difficult and expensive, the historic centers are restricted, and the train is faster city-to-city than driving. Rent a car only for a Rioja or Andalusian countryside leg, and only for those days.
Getting there from Placer County
No nonstop from Sacramento — you connect through San Francisco, Los Angeles or an East Coast hub, usually landing in Madrid or Barcelona the next morning. Count your ten days from the second day, and fly home from a different city than you flew into; open-jaw tickets to Spain rarely cost more and save you a full travel day.
The work worth handing over is the sequencing and the timed entries — the Alhambra, the Alcázar, Sagrada Família and the restaurant tables all have to be locked before the hotels, and in that order — the same discipline a ten-day Italy trip needs. Two cities on these routes have their own guides: four days in Barcelona, and how to eat pintxos properly in San Sebastián.
Call Roseville Travel at (916) 782-6363 and we will build it around your dates.