AboutVíctor Díaz Expertise I live in Madrid,and travel frequently to Valencia. I have also travelled to many places all over spain, if haven't been there i'd try to help anyway providing my knowledge and links.
I enjoy trekking in the mountains, and know pyrinees, Picos de Europa and mountains in the center.
Question holas senor,
I'm planning to take a trip for christmas and new year to spain. I'm not a frequent holiday person, and was wondering if you could help me with a few details.
How is the availability of vegetarian fare in most places in spain? I would like to visit barcelona, and madrid for sure.
Also i was wondering if you could suggest an itinerary for a trip of spain, for a 9day holiday for a middle aged couple. We prefer to keep one city as our base, not moving our bags around too much. Though we wouldn't mind travelling to and fro from the base hotel, even if it's a little wasteful in terms of time. And we'd like to be in barcelona for new years.
Any advice and information would be very appreciated.
Muchas gracias
Answer Hello Rachna
In big cities you will find vegetarian restaurants, but you need to look for them. In small cities it's much more difficult.
For example in Madrid http://www.esmadrid.com/en/portal.do?TR=C&IDR=318
and many other restaurants which are not specifically for vegetarians but where you may eat perfectly http://www.frescco.com/
etc..
I would say that spain is not still very friendly for vegetarians, once you are otuside the main cities.
For your travel, you could visit just Barna and Mad splitting the 9 days with 4 and 5 days, giving one for the travel between both cities and bearing in mind that 25 of decembar and 1 of january are holidays and most things things remains closed.
Another option is adding Seville to your travel, it adds a charming city with a different look, with more moorish style, but it adds also more km to your travel and you will need to move three times of hotel.
You could do as follows Mad 3 days, Seville 3 days, Barna 3 days, or Mad 5/4 days Barna 4/5days
travel between Mad and Sevilla or Mad and Barcelona could be with high speed trains AVE, check www.renfe.es
You can book tickets as far as 62days in advance, i recommend booking all the hotels and tickets for trains and or planes for that daes well in advance. For trains booking in advance will let you choose some good offers, that will be few for christmas.
If you choose mad, sev and barna, the travel between sev and barna could be by plane (check iberia, spanair, vueling...) as it's a longer distance.
Madrid is very good for daytrips as these destinations are very well connected by train. There are more daytrips available, but these are the three more important.
Barcelona may deserve more time for the city itself and less for daytrips, despite Montserrat is an easy daytrip (half day) and recommendable if the weather is fine (for the sights form the mountain)
Cordoba is also a must from Sevilla.
You may choose to focus on Madrid and Barcelona and leave Sevilla and Andalucia region (with Cordoba, Malaga and Granada) for a future trip in the future, with 7 to 9 days would be ok (better to avoid summer).
Also it would be great to arrive to Madrid and leave spain from Barcelona or the opposite.
