Travelling in Spain France! Itinerary ok?

I am planning to travel to Spain and then on to France in late September, early October. Please look at this itinerary and let me know if i need to:

1. Change the sequence of cities to visit.
2. Skip any city
3. Extend or shorten my stay in any city.

I also seek ways to identify how to locate a hostel close to a railway station since we will be traveling on a flexi saver pass.

Thanks in advance for your help everyone!

Are the 1 day cities, just day visits. Cause there is an awful lot of them.

Personally, I would give myself more time in the Larger cities (Barcelona, Madrid, Paris) and do day trips from there.
Is there any need to go to Pamplona outside of the San Fermin Festival?

I guess the best option is to look at what you want to do in each city and then change it around.

It just looks a bit rushed to me, but I may be wrong.

Ah! Ok, so it IS possible to stay on in the larger cities and make day trips to the smaller ones. My impression about the distances between each of those cities needs correction.

I am not so sure about what all to concentrate on…in terms of places to see. All the cities/towns have so much to offer. Maybe a list of must-see might help.

Thanks trent84.

in terms of hostels near the train stations… now that the hostels are integrated into the trips, you can view the hostels in a city by clicking on “Book Hostel” and then pick hostels that you think you would be interested in. assuming there is a map for that hostel, you can zoom out to see how close it is to where the train tracks converge (most likely the station). i started doing that when i was traveling so i could get an idea where the hostels were located in relation to the train station and what i wanted to see…

i also agree that 1 day is not really enough time in a city. a lot of hostels have strange check in rules (eg – check in is after 4 pm) and this can make it somewhat complicated to get settled in a city. you will be putting your stuff in train lockers, hostel storage areas and such all the time, so be prepared for that. you will have to have some sort of a ‘break away’ bag that you can easily separate from your main luggage to take with you to do your sight seeing when you lock up your main bag. pack light; you will SUFFER if you dont…

i would recommend stopping in a city you are interested in for a couple extra days at least once a week so you can unwind a bit and do some laundry and give your feet a rest.

As mentioned, you’ve got too many 1 and 2 day stops and are trying to see too much. Add more time to Madrid and Barcelona (a day each would be good), especially since Madrid seems to be where you’re landing and that first day will not be a very productive one in terms of sight-seeing. Segovia & Toledo could be done as day trips from Madrid, but you might want to save Toledo for once you’re leaving Madrid to head to Sevilla or Cordoba and spend the night there as I’ve heard it’s really cool to be there at night after most of the tourist crowd has left. I would almost certainly skip Pamplona & Tarragona. I’d also reconsider trying to see all of these cities: Sevilla, Valencia, Malaga, Toledo, Cordoba. Prioritize and skip one or two of them.

Thanks Swill and Augustine.

Yes, a break away bag definitely makes sense. I usually travel light anyway. And I’ll try locating the hostels close to train lines.

Here’s how I’ll rearrange the Spain leg of my tour:

1. Madrid ( + Segovia day trip) – 4 days
2. Toledo – 1 day
3. Seville (+Cordoba day trip) – 3 days
4. Malaga – 2 days
5. Valencia – 3 days
6. Barcelona – 4 days (maybe a day trip to Tarragona)

This’ll give some breathing space to rearrange if required and rest!

My priority is getting the itinerary pat down before I book. Let me know if this seems fine.

Have you about staying overnight in Cordoba instead of making it a day trip and having to go back to Sevilla? You could go Sevilla-Cordoba-Malaga, or Sevilla-Malaga-Cordoba-Valencia.

Hmm..that is an option.

I had another query. I looked on maps and found several train stations in the proximity of hotels/hostels. Do all the Renefe trains stop at all stations then? Or do i need to get to a particular station to catch the train to say, Toledo, from Madrid.

It is puzzling me and I want to find a hostel closest to the station i have the take the train from.

Is there a link with point to point timetable of the trains. The link i tried is not working and Renefe website is in, well, Spanish.

I’d cut bordeaux to a day and skip Marseille entirely…you’ve seen one big, industrial port you’ve seen ‘em all

Renfe’s English site doesn’t give info 100% in English, but you can at least look up timetables. Put in your cities then click on the train name under where it says “type of train” and it will show you the stations the train stops at.
http://www.renfe.es/…
You can also use the D-Bahn site to get information about stations/stops all over Europe. Once you get the list of trains on a route, click the arrow next to a train so it shows more detailed information, and then click “show intermediate stops” to get the full route.

Thanks finnegan!

augustine25, that suggestion worked! Thanks again. I’ll try D-Bahn also.