When I look back at our first trip to Spain, what stands out most from a planning standpoint is how well the route itself worked.
We traveled from January 22–29, 2024, flying overnight to Madrid, immediately continuing by train to Barcelona, then working our way through Valencia and back to Madrid before flying home.
In eight calendar days, we visited three major Spanish cities, took a spontaneous wine-country day trip to Requena and fit in experiences ranging from the Sagrada Família to our first Atlético Madrid match. I used six PTO days for the trip, which is still an interesting part of how the calendar came together, but the reason the itinerary worked wasn’t really the PTO math. It was the route, the rail connections and the fact that this pace fits the way we like to travel.
It was fast-paced. We stayed two nights in each city, took early trains, walked a lot and did not build much downtime into the itinerary. But for us, it worked.
Each stop also felt different enough that moving on after two nights didn’t feel repetitive: Barcelona’s architecture and the Sagrada Família, Valencia’s slower wandering and a completely spontaneous wine-country day, and Madrid’s Royal Palace, e-bike tour and our first Atlético Madrid match.
I wouldn’t call this the perfect Spain itinerary, because I don’t think there is one. This was our first trip to Spain, and our travel style tends to be faster than some people’s. What I can tell you is exactly how we used our time, where the pace worked, where it cost us energy and what I would plan differently now.
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- Our 8-day Spain trip at a glance
- The itinerary worked because we kept moving in one direction
- January 23: we landed in Madrid and still made the Sagrada Família that afternoon
- January 24: the Barcelona day that taught me where I would spend more time
- January 25: an early train let us move cities and still have a Valencia day
- January 26: Requena wasn’t even the original plan
- January 27: the 7 a.m. train gave us most of a Madrid day back
- January 28: Royal Palace by day, Atlético Madrid by night
- The train strategy is one of the main reasons this trip worked
- Where we stayed—and why hotel points mattered
- Where we saved—and where we deliberately spent more
- Did this itinerary feel too rushed?
- What I would change if I planned the same trip today
- So, can you really do Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid in one week?
Our 8-day Spain trip at a glance
Our route was:
Madrid arrival → Barcelona → Valencia → Madrid → home
I used six PTO days for the eight-calendar-day trip. The weekend in the middle helped stretch the time away, while Mitch used seven PTO days because he also took the Tuesday after we returned home off.
I had actually worked both Saturday and Sunday immediately before our Monday departure, so the calendar looked a little more efficient on paper than the trip felt from an energy standpoint. Our late-afternoon flight at least gave me part of Monday to rest, finish packing and get ready to leave.
That schedule mattered, but it was only one piece of how the itinerary came together.
The itinerary worked because we kept moving in one direction
Spain’s rail system was a big reason this route felt practical. Instead of adding flights between cities or renting a car for the full trip, we used trains for every intercity move.
Our first connection was also the most aggressive. Our overnight flight landed in Madrid at 5:45 a.m. on January 23, and our Iryo train left Madrid Puerta de Atocha at 9:16 a.m. and arrived at Barcelona Sants at 12:01 p.m. We paid €27.62 per person, or about $30 at the exchange rate when we bought the tickets.
That gave us roughly three and a half hours between our scheduled landing and train departure. It worked, but that does not mean I would tell everyone to copy it. A significant flight delay, unusually long immigration line or baggage problem could have changed the entire morning.
We accepted that risk because getting to Barcelona before lunch gave us the rest of our arrival day there instead of sacrificing another night to Madrid. That decision set the tone for most of the trip: when we spent money or accepted a little inconvenience, it was usually because doing so bought us time somewhere else.
January 23: we landed in Madrid and still made the Sagrada Família that afternoon
After the train ride from Madrid, we checked into Hotel Bagués, where we had a Deluxe Double room on La Rambla.
Where we stayed in Barcelona: We stayed at Hotel Bagués on La Rambla, which gave us a very central base for our two nights in the city.
By this point, we had been traveling—and mostly awake—for a very long time. Lunch at Bar Lobo was not glamorous travel-blog food; I remember greasy nachos being exactly what I wanted after an overnight flight.
Then we went to the experience I cared most about in Barcelona: the Sagrada Família.
We had booked the Barcelona: Sagrada Familia Fast Track Tour with Tower Option through IBE TOURS. No one else showed up for our small-group tour, so it essentially became a private tour for the two of us. That luck obviously isn’t something another traveler can count on, but it made an already worthwhile experience even better.
Our guide pointed out architectural, sculptural and cultural details that I know I would have missed walking through on my own. The tower access gave us city views and let us see details much closer than we could from street level.
For me, this is a very good example of intentional spending. We weren’t simply paying more to enter the building; we were paying for interpretation and access, and both materially changed the experience. I would absolutely book a guided Sagrada Família visit with tower access again.
What I would be more cautious about repeating is scheduling an important timed attraction on the afternoon of an overnight international arrival. It worked beautifully for us, but it was also one delayed flight away from becoming a problem.
Planning your own visit? We booked an IBE TOURS guided Sagrada Família tour with tower access in 2024. If you want the same guided + tower format, you can compare current tower-access tour options here.
Afterward, churros felt well-earned, and we ended the night with tapas and wine at Restaurante Andurina. It was a lot for an arrival day, but it was also one of the strongest days of the trip.
January 24: the Barcelona day that taught me where I would spend more time
Our second Barcelona day was much less structured.
We started at Mercat de la Boqueria, then made our way toward the marina and Montjuïc. We walked through the gardens, rode the cable car, continued to the Olympic Stadium and eventually stopped at Tapas San Miguel for a late lunch.
After lunch, we walked through the Gothic Quarter, stopping to see the exterior of Barcelona Cathedral and continuing to the exterior of the Basílica de Santa Maria del Mar.
At the time, the day didn’t feel like a planning failure. We were enjoying ourselves, seeing a lot and never felt like we had run out of things to do. My opinion changed more through hindsight than through disappointment.
If I were planning Barcelona now, I would research the geography much more carefully and use local transportation more strategically instead of relying so heavily on walking. The biggest example was the Olympic Stadium. The walk there used more of our limited time and energy than the stop ultimately felt worth to me.
I’d still make time for Montjuïc. I especially liked walking through the gardens and taking the cable car.
Planning to visit Montjuïc? You can book Montjuïc Cable Car tickets through GetYourGuide. The cable car was one of the Barcelona experiences I’d make time for again, especially for the views over the city and waterfront.
But with the same amount of time today, I would group that part of Barcelona more deliberately and be willing to cut the Olympic Stadium or marina area before cutting something like Sagrada Família or the parts of Montjuïc we enjoyed most.
Barcelona is also the one city from this trip where hindsight makes me think, I could easily use another day here. That doesn’t mean our original allocation felt wrong while we were living it. It means I now know what else I would want to see.
January 25: an early train let us move cities and still have a Valencia day
We left Barcelona Sants at 7:15 a.m. on a Renfe Euromed train and arrived at Valencia Joaquín Sorolla at 10:10 a.m. Our Comfort tickets were €43.35 per person, or about $47 at the time.
The early departure wasn’t particularly relaxing, but it did exactly what we needed it to do: we changed cities without giving up the entire day.
Our friends, who had visited Spain before, joined us for the Valencia and Madrid portions of the trip. Mitch and I had primarily planned Barcelona, while they took more of the lead on Valencia and Madrid.
We checked into the AC Hotel Valencia before heading out.
Where we stayed in Valencia: We stayed at AC Hotel Valencia by Marriott, which gave us a convenient base near the City of Arts and Sciences for our two nights in Valencia.
We climbed Torres de Serranos, walked around the City of Arts and Sciences area, spent time along the beach and boardwalk and wandered through the city.
Valencia also gave us one of those travel moments that no itinerary could have produced. We noticed paintings through an open studio, went inside and met artist Molina Ferrer. We ended up talking with him for quite a while and bought one of his paintings, which he signed for us.
Those unexpected moments are part of why I don’t want an efficient itinerary to become an over-scheduled itinerary. Planning helped us fit three cities into a week, but leaving enough room to walk through an open door gave us one of the memories we still associate with Valencia.
January 26: Requena wasn’t even the original plan
Requena is probably the best example from this trip of a last-minute decision becoming one of the things we still talk about years later.
We did not arrive in Valencia with a carefully planned Requena wine itinerary. We decided to go the night before after we had already walked through a good portion of Valencia and January wasn’t exactly giving us beach weather.
One of our friends found a private driver through WhatsApp, and suddenly we had a completely different plan for the next day.
We visited Sierra Norte, Pagos de Tharsys and Murviedro, with lunch at Mesón Fortaleza between winery stops. Each winery felt different: Sierra Norte had outdoor seating, beautiful views and wine we really enjoyed; Pagos de Tharsys felt smaller and more boutique; and Murviedro was darker and more secluded, with distinctive clay bottles that I still remember.
Our driver recommended Mesón Fortaleza, a local family-owned restaurant. The men ordered rabbit paella, and the lunch added to the feeling that we had temporarily stepped outside the faster rhythm of the rest of the trip. That slower pace was a large part of why the day worked.
Why the private driver was a splurge I would repeat
Hiring a driver cost more than figuring out some version of the day ourselves, but it also meant none of us had to rent and return a car, drive in a country we didn’t know, worry about GPS or cell service, or appoint someone as the designated driver on a winery day.
Splitting the cost between two couples made the decision easier. More importantly, the money bought us convenience, safety and a relaxed day.
We weren’t navigating between wineries or watching the clock because someone needed to drive. We had hotel pickup and drop-off and could simply enjoy the day with our friends.
I would spend the money again. In fact, we enjoyed the structure of that day enough that it influenced how I’ve thought about planning similar wine-country days on later trips.
Looking for a similar private Requena wine day? Viator offers private Utiel-Requena wine-country options with transportation, tastings and lunch. Our own Requena day was arranged separately with a private driver and different winery stops, but that type of private setup is much closer to the flexible day we enjoyed.
January 27: the 7 a.m. train gave us most of a Madrid day back
Our final intercity move was another early one.
We left Valencia Joaquín Sorolla at 7:00 a.m. and arrived at Madrid Puerta de Atocha–Almudena Grandes at 8:58 a.m. We purchased the final train leg through Rail Ninja, and our two tickets cost $164 total.
By leaving at 7 a.m., we could move cities and still have almost an entire sightseeing day in Madrid.
We checked into the Hyatt Centric Gran Vía Madrid, where our room was a 1 King Balcony.
Where we stayed in Madrid: We stayed at Hyatt Centric Gran Vía Madrid, right on Gran Vía, which gave us a very central base for our two nights in Madrid.
The balcony turned out to be one of the nicest hotel surprises of the trip. Instead of facing into a courtyard or directly toward another building, we had a wide panoramic view across Madrid.
We ate lunch at Mercado de San Miguel, then spent time around Plaza Mayor and the Royal Palace area before our afternoon e-bike tour.
We booked the Guided Essential Madrid E-Bike Tour, departing from Calle de Santiago 18. The route covered a surprising amount of the city, including areas around the Royal Palace and Almudena Cathedral, Sabatini Gardens, Plaza de España, Plaza Mayor, Barrio de las Letras, Retiro Park, the Crystal Palace, Puerta de Alcalá, Cibeles and Puerta del Sol.
We saw far more than we would have covered on foot that afternoon. My main criticism is that it was sometimes difficult to hear the guide while riding, but I’d still do that type of tour again because it gave us both an overview of Madrid and a better sense of which areas we wanted to spend more time exploring afterward.
Looking for a similar Madrid e-bike experience? GetYourGuide currently lists a Literary Quarter and Retiro Park electric bike tour that includes Retiro Park, the Crystal Palace and several of the central Madrid sights we rode through.
That evening, we had drinks and dinner at Chambao to celebrate our friends’ anniversary. It was a fun way to end a day that had started before sunrise in Valencia.
January 28: Royal Palace by day, Atlético Madrid by night
Our final full day in Spain had a completely different rhythm from the day before.
We started with the Royal Palace of Madrid. This was one of the major sights I knew I wanted to see before the trip, and the interior was worth making time for. After several days of covering cities quickly, this was the kind of attraction where slowing down and actually going inside mattered.
Planning to visit the Royal Palace? You can book a fast-access Royal Palace of Madrid admission ticket through GetYourGuide. Going inside was worth making time for, especially after several days of mostly moving through cities quickly.
We also returned to Mercado de San Miguel—yes, we went twice. For a trip this short, I normally don’t spend much time deliberately repeating stops, but the market was easy to work into our Madrid plans and gave us another chance to wander through the stalls. We picked up some Ibérico ham before heading back toward the hotel.
Lunch was much less glamorous: McDonald’s on our hotel balcony overlooking Gran Vía. And I actually loved it. After several days of restaurants, trains, tours and sightseeing, sitting outside with an easy lunch and a view over Madrid was one of those simple travel moments that ended up sticking with me.
The biggest event of the day, though, was that evening.
Going to an Atlético Madrid match was absolutely worth building into the trip
Before heading to the stadium, we had dinner at Mesón Riaño, then made our way to Cívitas Metropolitano for our first Atlético Madrid match.
Neither of us needed to be lifelong Atlético supporters for it to be fun. Being inside the stadium, surrounded by local fans and experiencing a major European football match in person felt completely different from simply visiting another attraction.
It also gave the trip something I increasingly look for when planning: an experience tied to a specific place and moment that I couldn’t just recreate on a future visit whenever I wanted.
If a football match lines up with your travel dates and you have any interest at all in the sport, I think it is worth checking the schedule before filling every evening with tours and dinner reservations.
Want to catch an Atlético Madrid match? Check the official Atlético de Madrid ticket page before your trip to see whether a home match lines up with your dates. Going to a match ended up being one of the experiences I’d most want to prioritize again.
Combining a major Madrid landmark with a live sporting event gave us two completely different experiences on our final full day without needing another day in the city. Looking back at the entire trip, the match belongs in the same category as Sagrada Família and our Requena wine day: experiences I would actively prioritize rather than trying to squeeze in around everything else.
The train strategy is one of the main reasons this trip worked
Rail was central to making this trip practical.
For the two of us, our three intercity train legs were:
January 23: Madrid Puerta de Atocha → Barcelona Sants, 9:16 a.m.–12:01 p.m., €27.62 per person — approximately $30 per person
January 25: Barcelona Sants → Valencia Joaquín Sorolla, 7:15–10:10 a.m., €43.35 per person — approximately $47 per person
January 27: Valencia Joaquín Sorolla → Madrid Puerta de Atocha–Almudena Grandes, 7:00–8:58 a.m., $164 total for two through Rail Ninja
Using the average December 2023 exchange rate from when we purchased the tickets, we spent about $319 total for the two of us across all three intercity train legs—roughly $160 per person.
Two of those trains left shortly after 7 a.m., which meant we were moving cities during hours we were willing to sacrifice instead of losing the middle of a sightseeing day. For a route built around three cities, that felt like a very good use of the travel budget, and I would absolutely build a similar trip around rail again.
I just wouldn’t plan a current trip by copying our 2024 schedules, stations or fares. Those are the kinds of details I would recheck before booking.
Where we stayed—and why hotel points mattered
We stayed two nights in each city, which meant two hotel changes during the trip:
Barcelona: Hotel Bagués, Deluxe Double
Valencia: AC Hotel Valencia
Madrid: Hyatt Centric Gran Vía Madrid, 1 King Balcony
We used hotel points for all three stays, which made a meaningful difference in the overall cost of a multi-city trip. I don’t consider points stays truly “free” because those points have value, but using them kept a major cash expense off this particular trip and allowed more of our cash budget to go toward experiences.
The hotel stay that taught me the most practical lesson was probably Hotel Bagués. I liked the hotel, and the room size felt reasonable for a European city hotel. The problem was our luggage.
Large side-opening suitcases took up an absurd amount of the available floor space every time we opened them. That experience is part of why I now prefer smaller or trunk-style luggage for trips where we’re changing European hotels frequently.
The Madrid stay taught me something different: sometimes a room assignment can materially improve a stay even when you didn’t choose the hotel solely for the room itself. That balcony and panoramic view added something memorable to our two nights in Madrid.
I can tell you how these hotels worked for our itinerary. I can’t tell you they’re the best hotels or the best locations in each city based on one stay.
Where we saved—and where we deliberately spent more
This trip wasn’t built around spending as little as possible. It was built around deciding where money would actually make the trip work better.
Rail is one example. It moved us between cities without adding rental-car logistics or repeatedly sending us through airports in the middle of the trip. Hotel points handled one of the trip’s biggest potential cash expenses, leaving more of our cash budget available for the experiences we cared about.
Requena is probably the clearest example of where we were willing to spend more. We spent approximately $300 on tastings and wine purchases across Sierra Norte, Pagos de Tharsys and Murviedro, and brought home more than a dozen bottles of wine packed in three-bottle cardboard carriers and cushioned with clothing in our checked luggage.
We also hired a private driver for the day. Splitting the cost between two couples made that splurge easier to justify, but the real value was what it bought us: hotel pickup and drop-off, no rental-car logistics, no navigating between wineries and no need for anyone in our group to be the designated driver.
The guided Sagrada Família tour and tower access are another example. We paid more than we would have for basic admission, but the guide helped us understand details we would have missed on our own, and the tower access added a completely different perspective.
The Atlético Madrid match was also a splurge that ended up being one of our lasting memories from Spain.
That’s generally how I think about travel spending now. I don’t need every decision to be cheap; I need the extra money to do something—save time, reduce friction, improve access or make an experience meaningfully better.
Did this itinerary feel too rushed?
For us, no. It was definitely fast-paced, but it felt like a good balance at the time, and looking back I can see several reasons it worked as well as it did.
The overnight flight gave us most of our arrival day. Early trains let us change cities without sacrificing the middle of the day. The cities felt different enough from one another that moving on every two nights didn’t feel repetitive, and Requena gave us one noticeably slower day in the middle of the trip.
January probably helped too. We experienced chilly mornings and evenings but milder weather during the middle of the day, and the crowds felt surprisingly light compared with what we had expected.
Most importantly, this pace fits the way we travel. We like full days, don’t need large amounts of downtime built into every itinerary and never felt like we were running out of things to do or forcing ourselves to fill time.
That does not mean the pace would work for everyone. If your ideal trip involves slow mornings, long lunches and several afternoons with nothing scheduled, I would not use our pace as a template.
But I also don’t look back and think we ruined the trip by moving too quickly. With the same eight-day window, I would probably still keep the basic Barcelona → Valencia → Madrid allocation. If I could add another sightseeing day, Barcelona is where I would put it.
What I would change if I planned the same trip today
I would not tear this itinerary apart and rebuild it from scratch. I’d keep the overall Barcelona → Valencia → Madrid structure, still travel between the cities by train, still book a guided Sagrada Família tour with tower access, still consider a private driver for a Requena wine day and still go to a football match if our dates lined up with one.
The biggest changes would be smaller and more strategic.
I would research Barcelona more deeply before the trip and pay much more attention to geography before deciding what we could reasonably cover on foot. I would group the Montjuïc area more deliberately, use local transportation more strategically and be quicker to cut the Olympic Stadium or marina area if time were tight.
The long walk to the Olympic Stadium is one of the clearest examples from this trip of spending time and energy somewhere that didn’t give us enough back.
I’d also bring different luggage. Our large side-opening suitcases repeatedly took up more hotel-room floor space than I wanted to sacrifice.
And I would give myself a recovery day after we got home.
Mitch took Tuesday off after the trip. I went straight back to work the day after returning from Europe, and going back after an overnight return and a major time change was brutal.
At the time, I thought using one less PTO day was the more efficient choice. After actually doing it, I don’t see a recovery day as wasted time anymore. If our schedules allowed two recovery days after a major time-zone trip, I wouldn’t object to that either.
Those changes wouldn’t fundamentally slow the trip down. They’d remove some unnecessary friction from the same fast-paced trip.
So, can you really do Barcelona, Valencia and Madrid in one week?
We did, and for our travel style, it worked.
The price of fitting that much in was early mornings, two hotel changes, a lot of walking and very little dead time. For us, that tradeoff was worth it; for another traveler, it may not be.
The fact that we fit the eight-calendar-day trip around six of my PTO days is still something I appreciate about how the calendar worked. But what made the itinerary work once we were in Spain was the rail route, early travel times and choosing a pace that actually suited us.
That’s why I wouldn’t hand someone our itinerary and say, “This is how you should do Spain.” I’d say: this is what we did, this is what worked, and this is what I’d change now that I’ve actually taken the trip.
If that pace sounds exciting rather than exhausting, the Barcelona → Valencia → Madrid route is one I would still consider.