Planning 2 Weeks in Madrid & Andalucia

My wife Chris and I just returned from a long-awaited two-week vacation in Spain, and for anyone planning a first trip there thought some of what we learned along the way might be of use.

So for starters, where to go?

The first big questions: Is it advisable to do Barcelona and Madrid and some of Andalucia in two weeks? Can you visit Spain and Portugal in that time? Well, yes, but my friends who know Spain well suggested we cool our jets and limit the daylong travels involved in such ambitious routes. In the end we decided to save Barcelona and Portugal for some hoped for future trips, land in Madrid and after a few days there rent a car and head out for an Andalucian adventure.

Another caveat: I understand that Spain has some of the best beaches in the world, many along the Mediterranean coast, but our thinking was that beaches are beaches, we have good ones here, let’s do something new. So we came within an hour of the shoreline and never saw the sea. Maybe not your cup of tea, but that’s what we did.

Here's why. Three years ago, just as I was retiring from professoring, I had the honor of doing a Fulbright fellowship in Malaysia (focus was assistive technology for autism), hosted by Muslim professors who took me to mosques and introduced me to a culture where each day is punctuated by five calls to prayer (not to mention the best street food I’ve ever tasted). So in visiting Spain, I wanted to visit the existing landmarks of Islam’s 800-year reign in Andalucia, the mosques and Alcazars of a golden age of science, art, technology and religious tolerance. Again, maybe that’s not your thing, but if your bucket list includes UNESCO World Heritage Sites, on a journey through Cordoba, Seville, and Grenada (with stops in the white villages along the way), you can check off quite a few.

So we had a route that our friends approved:  Madrid (3 nights), Cordoba (2), Seville (3), Ronda (1), Grenada (2), Toledo (1) and back to the airport in Madrid.

The next question was when to go?

If you’re headed to southern Spain, we learned that high season is not the summer (stiflingly hot, even in Madrid), but what most other places call shoulder season, spring and fall (winter is rain and not just on the plain). We didn’t know that, so thinking we were getting ahead of the crowds and high prices, we booked our trip for the first two weeks in May.

The second thing to consider is festivals, and this is where I made my biggest mistake, not checking Spanish fiesta calendars. If we’d left a week earlier, we could have enjoyed the Easter pageantry that takes place in pretty much every Spanish town, but we also just missed the courtyard festival in Cordoba (when flower-bedecked private courtyards open to the public), the Feria de Abril in Seville (when the whole town goes flamenco), and who knows how many other local fairs. On the other hand, we did, entirely by accident, find ourselves in Cordoba for the Festival of Crosses weekend, every square in the old town turned into an all-day-and-night beer and tapas fest replete with flamenco performances, bands and dj’s. Our takeaway being, since there’s a party anywhere you look in southern Spain, whatever your calendar, you’ll probably hit one. But unlike us, do check before you go.

Next question: What’s your Budget?

In the old days, I loved the shoe-string back-packing hostel style of European travel, but we’re older now and try to take things up a notch. On two-week trips to Provence and Costa Rica, we’d budgeted $5k and had memorable adventures, so that was the amount we socked away for Spain. Driving up to Dulles airport from Richmond allowed us a nonstop red-eye to Madrid at a good price (we picked the days to leave and return based on cheapest); signing up for the United Explorer VISA card knocked an additional $300 off the plane fare (and paid for car rental insurance); we rented Air BnB apartments, so we could shop for groceries and make breakfast and some lunches cheaply; and after pricing out trains versus car rental went with Enterprise for what turned out to be an easy-peasy rental experience.

Needless to say, to save money, we booked all of these months ahead of our trip. Though in high season, we found wonderful and affordable one-bedroom flats in the center of town for all of our stops (caveat about using Air BnB, see my previous post: To Air BnB or Not to Air BnB). After toting up those costs, with money to burn, we splurged on a Hammam bath and massage in Cordoba (magical!), a flamenco show in Seville (riveting), a tour of an olive oil maker in Ronda (surreal), tickets to the cathedrals, mosques, and some other sites along our way, and even a private flamenco lesson for Chris. In Spain, we bought melt-in-your-mouth jamon iberico, local cheeses and fruit and $10 knockout wines for our picnics, learned to do tapas meals cheaply and deliciously, and splurged on a couple full dinners out. After souvenirs, we came home $300 over budget, and that’s fine with us.

Essential Sites and Activities:

Travel websites will tell you what tickets to buy ahead of time for each town, and I pretty much agree. In Madrid it was the Prado and the Thyssen-Bornemisza art museums, in Cordoba the Mezquita and Royal Alcazar, in Seville the Alcazar (group tour guide) and cathedral (and its tower), in Granada the Alhambra (a half-day guided tour). Bought tickets ahead of time for the other activities listed above, too. One thing to keep in mind. When you’re buying tickets online, go directly to the site’s own website. Buying from a secondary purveyor will cost you more and word is that some are fakes, so you can end up at the Prado with a bum ticket and no way to get in). Also, if you’re traveling in high season like we did, don’t expect to get a ticket for any major site when you arrive. We missed touring the magnificent cathedral in Seville, because I’d failed to buy ahead (even though our apartment was just steps away and its bells serenaded us).

So How’d it Go?

I’m going to post entries about each stop on our trip, but just want to say here that this first-time visitor to Spain fell hard for the place. We found the people we met unfailingly courteous and welcoming, the sites dazzling, the towns walkable, with a surprise on every corner, the drivers so much better than here, and don’t get me started on the delightful food. So what we’d intended as a history and culture lesson focused on Islamic monuments ended up as so much more. We’ve been home five days and I want to get back on the plane.

A Note on Communication:

My high school second language was French, Chris' Italian, so we did what we could to learn some basic conversational Spanish in the months leading up to our trip. I went back to the Rocket Spanish lessons I'd used for our Costa Rica trip, Chris liked Duolingo, and we scoured the web for other resources, finding tons of short videos on YouTube. My advice for non-Spanish speakers is to follow our lead, but also to use Google Translate on your phone, when you need it, and at the least be comfortable with greetings and basic queries, know how to read street signs, and always strive to smile, be affably clueless, and at every interaction, try to first communicate in Spanish (on our trip, typically the response was a smile, a nod and a quick, courteous switch to English).

Reading List – Before You Go:

Andalucia: A Cultural History, by John Gill.

Breezy essays on the whole history of southern Spain right up until today, its food, culture and politics. If you can only read one book, pick this one.

Spain: A Unique History, by Stanley G. Payne.

A quite readable and balanced history from the Roman conquest to today (well, 2011) by an American historian.

The Ornament of the World – How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, by Maria Rosa Menocal.

When you visit the dazzling mosques and alcazars or walk the narrow streets of Andalucia’s old towns, having read this book will enrich all you see. Btw, PBS made a documentary of the same name based on the book, available on YouTube.

Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes (translation by Edith Grossman). This 900-page classic that no one reads is actually a page turner and a hoot, and may say more about Spanish culture than anything else you'll read. Having read it before our trip, first day in Madrid, we visited the Cervantes monument in Spanish Plaza.

Goya, by Robert Hughes. This well-illustrated biography by a passionate fan of the great artist also serves as a solid history of Spain in and around the Peninsular War with Napoleon that fueled some of Goya's great works. In Madrid, at the Prado, you simply have to visit the Goya wing, especially for the side-by-side May 1 and 2 paintings, the likewise paired Maja's and the dimly lit basement gallery where his Black paintings are hung. So knowing more about his life and times will help guide your visit.

Valasquez: Painter and Courtier, by Jonathan Brown. As with the Goya biography, this coffee table-sized book, chockful of color prints, weaves the tale of the great artist's life and work with the era (in his case the 1600s, when Spain was the world's great power). While at the Prado, you'll stand a long time before his wall-sized Las Meninas. Gradually, you'll ease your way forward in the crowd and find yourself face-to-face with all those staring painted faces, and at some point your companion will come to tear you away (or get stuck in the grip of this mesmerizing masterpiece, too).

Death in the Afternoon, by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway wrote this long essay about the art, science and history of bullfighting in 1932, but judging from the YouTube videos I've watched little has changed since. If you plan to attend a bullfight (we did not, though I kinda wish we had), this book will help you better appreciate the whole bloody ritual.

The Spanish Holocaust – Inquisition and Extermination in 20th Century Spain, by Paul Preston.

Several people warned me against bringing up the topic of the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) while in Spain. It’s simply too raw and current a topic, given that the Franco government, which repressed any open discussion of the war, ended just fifty years ago, and the facts are only now emerging. This book was the first to authoritatively demonstrate the atrocities committed by Franco and his fascist cronies in overthrowing the Republican government and exterminating all with Republican sympathies before, during and long after the Civil War. It’s a deep read, and the cruelties catalogued are stomach-turning. But I’m glad I read it and will long mull how this war, its centennial approaching, may have shaped the Spanish people today.