Have any of you taken the Madrid-Lisbon night train? I've read some old comments (not on ST) that parts of the ride are too bumpy for sleeping and I wonder whether, if that was true, the track has been upgraded since then. I know there are Madrid-Lisbon buses, too, but we don't want to spend lots of daylight hours on the bus and we hate night buses.

Or can anyone give me help on alternative transport routes? Here's the deal, which is a bit elaborate: my friend and I want to split 3 1/2 weeks between Andalucia and northern Portugal. We don't want a car in Andalucia, because we'll only be in cities, but we do want one in northern Portugal, where we'll be in rural areas. Getting between those two areas efficiently by public transport seems trickier than I'd thought. And every car rental place I've asked, including AutoEurope, quotes me about $700 in drop-off charges for picking up in Spain and dropping off in Portugal, so forget about that!

We hadn't planned on going to Lisbon or Madrid, but it looks like we might take the AVE from Sevilla or Cordoba to Madrid, mostly in order to get the train from there to Lisbon.

After combing guidebooks and online train, bus, and even budget airline sites, the other workable alternatives I've come up with so far are:

1) take direct bus from Sevilla to Faro (there are only 2 per day); rent car (we'd rather do that than take the train north within Portugal to rent a car further up); drive up north and around; fly home from Porto; or
2) rent car in Sevilla or Cordoba; drive into and around northern Portugal; drive back into Spain (maybe Salamanca) to drop it off; and fly home from Madrid. Alternative 2 involves more driving, essentially just so we can return the car.

Am I missing something obvious? I don't want a roundabout alternative, like taking connecting trains or buses way up into NW Spain and then down into Portugal, or taking taking a three-bus connection from Andalucia to the Algarve.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received. (Except the suggestion that we don't split the trip into those 2 areas--that decision has been made!) Thanks!

transport between Spain and Portugal is been upgraded thanks to the EU;but public transport is basically your bus or train unless you have a car which i strongly recommend. best way to travel by yours truly.

so rent a car in Sevilla and go to northern Portugal like Porto ,visit Lisbon, Coimbra, Braga etc come back to Sevilla to drop it off ,avoid drop off charges, then take the train to madrid for the flight home. Or if you can paid the drop off charges then do it at Lisbon and fly back home from there.

another poss is to take the train or bus from Sevilla to Lisboa,rent there,see northern portugal come bck drop off in lisboa and fly home

Thanks for the quick reply! Drop-off charges if we pick up and drop off in different countries are absurd, but not if we pick up and drop off in two different cities within the same country. So that's why we could pick up a car in Seville and drop it off further up north in Spain somewhere on the way to Madrid (or in Madrid itself).

Do you know if there's a way to get from Sevilla to Lisbon that doesn't involve changing a bunch of times or going via Madrid? The only ways I've found so far involve either 1) taking the bus (or a more complicated bus-train or bus-bus combination) to Faro and then the train, or else 2) a ridiculous train route via Merida and Caceres. Maybe there's a Sevilla-Lisbon bus. I'll investigate that next, so thanks for the idea.

It's me agaqin. Having looked around a bit for Sevilla-Lisbon buses, I've found out not only that they only seem to run a few times per week, but that the Sevilla-Faro bus may or may not run only in the summer. And we're going in April.

The option of driving from Spain into Portugal and back to Spain is looking better and better. Or else going to Sevilla-Madrid-Lisbon by train, including that night train.

Who thought this would be that hard?

You say you've looked at budget airline sites; have you looked at legacy airlines? I'll be going open-jaw Porto-Bilbao-Lisbon on Iberia for around $200. A round trip Seville-Lisbon in October is around the same all-inclusive after a pre-tax fare of $64, found at www.orbitz.com . Hey, there's $175 for an open-jaw Seville-Lisbon-Madrid, but they don't make that evident that it calls for an overnight in Valencia. This is April 2008? You have plenty of chance to see how low season fares can be, trying different routings, in case they haven't posted the schedules or lowest fares for April yet.

My god, man, you're a genius! I knew I had to be missing something. I hadn't wrapped my old-fashioned mind around the idea that even legacy carriers' intra-Europe fares had become relatively reasonable. Also, I was thinking that while in Europe I'd only want a one-way Spain-Portugal, since I could fly open jaw trans-Atlantic SFO-Malaga (better connections than SFO-Sevilla) and Porto-SFO. I'm not a fan of short-haul flights when I could go by land, but in this case it may be the way to go. I stuck in some sample dates for the spring on Sidestep and got Sevilla-Lisbon-Madrid (without Valencia!) for about $170. Alternatively, I guess I could buy a RT Seville-Lisbon, throw away the return, and still fly home from Portugal. I'm going to think through some of the options after I get some sleep. Gracias/obrigada/thanks.

In case anyone cares--and isn't already totally confused by my journey by now--I should say that there are some budget flights between Spain and Portugal. The ones that might work in my case are Madrid-Lisbon on Vueling or Madrid-Porto on Ryanair. I missed those when I first surveyed the budget scene because I was hoping to go direct from Andalucia to N. Portugal without going to either Madrid or Lisbon.

KT, after your initial posting I went to the Iberia website just to see what the options were, but all I got were non-direct flights and they were insanely expensive. But keep checking - I have used Iberia for inter-Spain travel a couple of times, and both times it was fairly inexpensive.

I don't know if this would work, but Iberia has some direct flights from Sevilla to Santiago de Compostela and you might find a good fare there (I just saw one for 89 Euro.) You could pick up the car in Santiago de Compostela, drive down into northern Portugal, then bring the car back to Santiago and fly home from there. Since you would be dropping the car off at the same place you rented it, there would be NO drop off charges.

I don't think it is too far from Santiago de Compostela to the border - a couple of hours maybe?

Just a thought.

Thanks to all for the help. It gave me great ideas for further research, and now it does look like we'll be flying and going to Madrid--not exactly what I'd envisioned, but it will work out, and I wouldn't mind visiting the Prado!

just reading, glad you are going to Madrid. From Madrid to heaven!!!not bad indeed.

flying now its an option,depending on your time but the land way is more scenic,taking more time.its a personal choice.You can try Click.es the low carrier offshoot of IBeria.here is their website in English
http://www.clickair.com/view/default.aspx?lang=2