New Year's in Andalusia

[wclavey]

Our family will be taking an extended vacation starting the week before Christmas and ending the second week of January, and it will include 7 days in Andalusia, roughly December 27 through January 3. It is a family vacation, not just for photography, but we are all inclined towards seeing historical sites. I think that we want to visit places in Seville, Cordoba and Granada.

So I am looking for information in regard to a few specific questions: (1) Should we stay in one city and travel to the others for "day trips" (...if so, which city) or should we spend 2 days in each of the cities? I am concerned that changing cities forces us to basically lose a day each time we change... (2) While I have lived in several countries outside the US, I am not keen on driving in places where traffic laws are just a suggestion... Do we need to drive or is public transportation the right thing? Would we be missing out on local sights worth seeing by not driving from city to city?

Unfortunately, I need to make some reservations now for the full trip and I'd like to give some structure to the portion in Spain. Any insight would be great! Thanks.

[Marcial]

1) Spend 2 days at each city
2) Public transportation is fine. But no much trouble in driving your own car (other than city centres closed to traffic). Moving among cities is a bonus.
The three cities are safe places but, this is important, do not leave aything in your car.

Marcial

[Scott Davis]

If you must pick one as a base, then stay in Cordoba, as it's about halfway between the other two. It's also probably a little cheaper than Seville, hotel-wise. It has been 20+ years since I've been to those three cities, so I don't remember a lot of details, but two days each give or take is not a lot, even just as a casual tourist. I think you'd be better served picking two of them and spending a little more time in each - from my opinion, I think I'd rather spend more time in Seville and Granada, and just day-trip to Cordoba - there's a couple of highlights (the mosque/cathedral and the synagogue) and the houses with whitewashed courtyards, but you can take those in in a day. The Alhambra of course is an entire day, or even two if you want, and then there's the arab quarter in Granada as well. Seville has the grand sights and more activities/attractions like the bull ring if you get tired of walking from church to church ( I don't know if the bullfighting season is still on in December, or if it would be a good idea/appealing in the least on a family vacation).

[wclavey]

Marcial & Scott, thanks for the advice. My wife & I have talked it over and we are going to propose the plan of staying in Granada for a few days and then moving to Seville for the rest of the time, and visiting Cordoba as a day trip from Seville. Again, thanks for the recommendation...

BTW, we lived in South America and took in the bullfighting season... my wife still has her ear that she was presented from our last bullfight in Trujillo, Peru. She says, "No more bullfights..."

Now to decide what cameras to take...

[Steve Gledhill]

... and visiting Cordoba as a day trip from Seville. ...

There's an excellent fast train service between Seville and Cordoba. And I even managed to buy two return tickets using Spanish from a phrase book!

[Scott Davis]

The rail system (RENFE) is quite good, and has been developing so it's not just a hub/spoke arrangement requiring you to go through Madrid to get from point A to point B. Do have your plans worked out in advance though, as the ticket agents are not real keen on providing assistance beyond the price of a given route. Use the RENFE website (which unfortunately is now not as easy to use as it used to be) to plan your train travel, then just walk in to the station and know what tickets you want to buy on what routes. I ran into this problem when I was in Spain the last time and just kind of winging it with my schedule. I did get help from the ticket agent but she gave me some grief when I had her help me figure out that the route I wanted to take would basically mean I was spending the last three days of my trip on the train and not doing anything else.