Spain 4-Day Itinerary

Spain’s three most visited monuments, the Alhambra, the Real Alcazar, and the Prado, all require timed entry tickets booked well in advance. The Alhambra sells out months ahead in summer; the Alcazar sells out days to weeks ahead. Book all three before you book your flights, and this itinerary works. Skip this step and you will spend your trip staring at “no availability” pages.

Spain uses the euro. Non-EU citizens under the Schengen 90/180 rule need no visa for a short visit; from 2025, travellers from countries previously entering visa-free (including the UK and USA) require an ETIAS travel authorisation, applied for online before departure. Trains within Spain are operated by Renfe; book at renfe.com in advance for significant savings over walk-up fares.

Day 1: Madrid

Barajas Airport (MAD) is 13 km from central Madrid. The metro Line 8 runs directly to Nuevos Ministerios (connecting to Lines 6 and 10) and costs around EUR 5 including the airport supplement. It takes about 25 minutes. Taxis are metered and cost a flat EUR 33 from any terminal to any point in Madrid’s urban core, by law.

The Prado Museum is the centrepiece of Day 1. General admission is EUR 15, but entry is free Monday to Saturday from 6-8 pm and Sundays from 5-7 pm. The free window is genuinely usable but draws a queue; if you are paying, the least crowded windows are Tuesday to Thursday mornings between 10 and 11:30 am. The collection is enormous and trying to see all of it is a mistake. Spend 90 minutes on Velazquez, Goya, and El Greco specifically, and the visit holds shape. The Prado’s “Black Paintings” room, Goya’s dark late work painted directly on the walls of his house, is the thing most visitors remember longest.

Retiro Park is directly adjacent and free. The Estanque Grande (the large central pond) has rowing boats available to hire. Late afternoon is the right time: the light is better, the families are out, and the park feels more like a place Madrileños actually use than a tourist attraction.

For dinner, avoid Gran Via entirely and go instead to Malasana or Chueca, both about 15 minutes’ walk north. The tapas and pintxos bars here are priced for locals rather than tourists and the quality is better. Casa Toni on Calle de la Cruz is a reasonable traditional option if you want something more central.

Day 2: Toledo Day Trip

Toledo is 30 minutes from Madrid Atocha by AVE high-speed train. Renfe runs frequent departures from early morning; book ahead to avoid the limited walk-up seats.

Toledo Cathedral ranks among the great Gothic buildings of Europe: construction started in 1226 and took 250 years. The treasury holds a 2.5-metre monstrance of solid gold and silver, displayed during Corpus Christi. The El Greco paintings inside are better contextualised here than anywhere because Toledo is where El Greco lived and worked for most of his career. The Synagogue of Santa Maria la Blanca, a former synagogue converted to a church in 1411, has Moorish columns and capitals that make the building a physical record of the city’s layered history.

Toledo works as a day trip but it earns an overnight if you have flexibility. The city empties after 6 pm when the day-trip coaches leave, and the medieval streets at dusk, with most of the tourists gone, are a different experience.

Lunch at Mirador del Valle gives a view across the full city and the Tagus River from the south side. Overpriced for the food, worth it for the panorama. Return to Madrid for the night.

Day 3: Seville

The AVE from Madrid Atocha to Seville Santa Justa takes about 2.5 hours. Several departures daily; the 7-8 am trains arrive in time for a full day.

The Real Alcazar (EUR 15.50 adult, free for children under 13) requires online advance booking with a specific time slot; walk-ups are rarely available. The palace is a sequence of Mudejar rooms and tilework built for Castilian kings by Moorish craftsmen in the 14th century, which makes it architecturally unlike anything else in Europe. The gardens are expansive and less crowded than the palace rooms. The upper royal apartments are only accessible on a separately booked guided tour (limited places, worth taking if available). Afternoon slots are generally less crowded than mornings.

Seville Cathedral is directly adjacent and almost as impressive. The Giralda tower (original minaret of the mosque the cathedral replaced) can be climbed via a series of ramps rather than stairs, built so that the muezzin could ride a horse to the top. The view from the summit is the best available in central Seville.

For a flamenco show, Casa de la Memoria in the Santa Cruz neighbourhood runs nightly performances in an intimate courtyard space, around EUR 22 per person. It is the better option over the larger commercial venues: smaller audience, better sight lines, and the dancers are professional rather than catering specifically to a tourist script.

Santa Cruz itself is worth a slow evening wander. Dinner at Bodega Santa Cruz on Calle Rodrigo Caro is as good a traditional Andalusian tapas bar as the city has: loud, narrow, no reservations, and the montaditos (small open-faced sandwiches) are prepared to order.

Day 4: Granada and Alhambra

Train from Seville to Granada takes around 2.5-3 hours with a change at Antequera. Check the Renfe app for current schedules; direct trains are limited. Book well ahead.

The Alhambra ticket (EUR 21 adult) must be purchased directly from the official Patronato de la Alhambra website and is timed, non-refundable, and non-transferable. Your passport or ID must match the booking. Peak season (April-October) sells out two to three months in advance. Arrive 15-30 minutes before your Nasrid Palaces time slot: late arrivals are turned away without exception, regardless of what the rest of your ticket covers. The Generalife gardens and the Alcazaba fortress are less restricted but still included in the same ticket.

A frank opinion: the Nasrid Palaces are worth the booking complexity. The tilework in the Court of the Lions is among the finest decorative craft surviving from the medieval world, and standing inside it is not something photographs prepare you for. If you can only get an evening ticket (there are special nighttime visits offered separately), take it. The illuminated palace at night is extraordinary.

After the Alhambra, walk down through the Albaicin neighbourhood rather than taking a taxi. The steep lanes pass white-walled houses with garden views of the Alhambra walls. The Mirador de San Nicolas is the designated viewpoint and draws crowds at sunset; get there 20 minutes early or accept that you will be watching the Alhambra over a crowd of phones.

Dinner at Carmela on Calle Colcha is solid contemporary Andalusian at mid-range prices (EUR 15-25 per main). Casa Moro near the Cathedral offers traditional Granada cooking including the city’s local dish of tortilla sacromonte (an omelette made with offal and brains, which sounds worse than it tastes).

One practical note: Granada restaurants still offer free tapas with every drink order, which is a pre-euro tradition that survives here but has mostly disappeared in Madrid and Seville. Order drinks at the bar and the kitchen sends plates automatically. Budget accordingly: one drink and two rounds of tapas is a cheap light dinner.