2 weeks in spain in oct : questions about areas to stay in and trains

The train takes you comfortably from city center to city center in about 3 hours without the annoyances, time wasters, and discomforts related to airports and air travel. It's an easy decision IMHO.

I wouldn't worry too much about having too many days in Madrid. There are a number of great day trips you can do from there. See this link from The Guardian.
>https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/apr/22/day-trips-from-madrid-spain
You could alternate city days and day-tripping days.

The train takes you comfortably from city center to city center in about 3 hours without the annoyances, time wasters, and discomforts related to airports and air travel. It's an easy decision IMHO.

I wouldn't worry too much about having too many days in Madrid. There are a number of great day trips you can do from there. See this link from The Guardian.
>https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/apr/22/day-trips-from-madrid-spain
You could alternate city days and day-tripping days.

thx for the reply and link
iys good to have options for my itinerary

Personally I liked Barcelona more than Madrid, but there are more nice day trips that you can do out of Madrid. As for a train ticket, the Barcelona-Madrid was an expensive, super fast train. By booking early we saved about 60%. I think you should read up about day trip places (like Segovia, Toledo etc) and decide how many you want to visit, add a couple days for Madrid itself and there you go, here's your Madrid time. I haven't been to Valencia, so can't comment. A nice day trip from Barcelona that I did was Tarragona.
I would not buy day trip tickets in advance, so you can be flexible, but do get them the night before or at least a couple of hours in advance.

ill be taking the train between cities and in my initial research there are 3 sites to book trains from : renfe.com (the national train service) , loco2.com and captaintrain.com
My questions about trains are :
1. is that the easiest way to travel between these cities--to me it looks the quickest and easiest for this trip and for this itinerary
2.. which is the better site to use for a foreigner

1 Yes, train is the easiest way to travel between those cities.
2 Renfe is the site you should use. No need for an intermediary.

Yes re train - Renfe has english version (http://www.renfe.com/EN/viajeros/)- however site seems to crash at times and when you go from page to page on the website it often defaults back to spanish. so have reset back to english. Having said that its a relatively easy website, another all english language alternate is the loco2 website however I've found they do not seem to list all available train times.

My preference is Barcelona so I'd go for Barclona 6 days , 3 days Valencia and 3 days in Madrid..

Re football tickets - issue is general public tickets are only released a couple of weeks before a game so you have 2 choices, either pre-book an agency and get a ticket but have no say where in the stands you'll sit or wait until tickets go on sale and hope there will be some for sale (same games sold out by pre sales to members). I wouldn't rely on scalpers selling. If you pre-order through an agency you'll need a spain postal address for tickets to be sent to. We ordered tickets last year via an English agency they were bit more expensive but crap seats high up in a corner. Personally I'd register on the respect websites FCBarcelona and Real Madrid and you'll get an email alert when tickets go onsale - don't know when you are travelling so have to consider that as season may be over or no home games when you are in those cities.

I personally really liked Madrid - spent 5 days there and could've easily spent more. As mentioned by an earlier poster, there are tons of great day trips out of the city should you wish to go elsewhere. I don't know if I could spend 7 days in Barcelona though...

thanks everyone so far your help

the general consensus seems to be if I stay in madrid longer , then plan day trips from there and renfe is my best choice for buying tickets
hopefully I can get some more info on soccer tickets but ill check out their team sites in the mean time

are there better or worse areas in those cities for me to stay in?

Yes, trains are the fastest and most comfortable way of getting from one city to another. If you book them online in advance it´s usually cheaper. There is a fast train (called AVE) from Valencia to Madrid and from Madrid to Barcelona. To get from Barcelona to Valencia you´ll have to take the normal train, look for the ones that are called EUROMED – they are more comfortable and faster as they stop in less places and they´re usually the same price as the slower trains (called Talgo). If you really want to save money, you can take the bus from Barcelona to Valencia, which will take you one hour longer, but can be as cheap as 10-12 euros (website is called www.alsa.es)

Valencia is not a huge city and is very safe in general, you can easily see the main tourist attractions in two days. If you want to stay somewhere central the downtown is called El Carmen, another neighbourhood close by is called Ruzafa or Russafa (both are very lively and have loads of good restaurants and bars though they will be more expensive), but staying anywhere around the metro stations Aragon/Amistad/Ayora that are between the centre and the beach will be fine as well.

Excellent advice from amscams above. Do check the prices of the AVE though and see if they fit your budget. I find it much better than the plane and if you count the whole cost (metro-bus etc to/from airport) it is fine.

Barcelona does not really have bad neighbourhoods, but El Raval (next to the Rambla) can be seedy/noisy, and El Gotico (the oldest and most touristy part of the city, the other side of the Rambla) is probably not so great value.

Since the metro is excellent and there are plenty stops and lines, you might consider somewhere in the poble nou district - next to the sea, not that many tourists, cheaper and 15 mins in metro from the city center.

Regarding the FC barcelona games - you don t mention your travel dates. I believe the new season only starts mid to end of August. The FC barcelona website is good and in English. As mentioned above, subscribe to get notified when tickets are on sale. The games in the beginning of the season are seldom sold out.