Rail holidays to Spain

Rail holidays to Spain

Rail travel to Spain is amazingly easy and very quick. You take the Eurostar to Paris and change to the Gare de Lyon for the route to Barcelona or the Gare de Montparnasse for the route to San Sebastian. You can reach both cities in one day from London. Within Spain you can move around easily between the major cities by the high-speed AVE network. You may also want to combine a rail touring holiday in Spain with the use of a hire-car in a certain location.

Rail touring holidays of Spain

If you don’t want to travel by train all the way to Spain or if you want to start your rail holiday in a location other than Catalonia or the Basque country, then the best option is to fly to Spain and then journey by train. This works particularly well for a city to city combination such as Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona, or Madrid, Cordoba, Granada and Seville.

Our hotels in Spain

All the luxury hotels that are featured by Expressions Holidays have been personally-selected to provide high standards of comfort, service and cuisine. Our hotels are renowned for their charm and character, quality of surroundings and service whilst providing rest and relaxation amid an atmosphere of luxury and style. In Spain our hotels range from boutique, country hotels on ancient farmland, wine haciendas, town mansions, historic palaces, seaside resorts and Paradors.

Train information

Eurostar offers almost hourly departures every day, with an average journey time from London St Pancras to Paris of 2 hours and 18 minutes. Not all trains stop at Ebbsfleet and Ashford stations in Kent, but parking is plentiful at both stations. The Eurostar trains have 8 coaches which are split into Standard Class, Standard Premier and Business Premier as well as two cafeterias. Standard Premier customers are served a light cold meal and enjoy a more spacious environment than Standard Class, while Business Premier customers receive a hot meal and unlimited beverages as well as lounge access. TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse) duplex, double-deck, high-speed trains operate between Paris Gare de Lyon and Figueres, Girona and Barcelona. They travel at up to 200mph and cover the distance between Paris and Barcelona in just under 6 hours and 30 minutes. The train stops at Montpellier and Perpignan too. You can leave Paris at 14.07 every day and arrive in Barcelona Sants at 20.34 hrs. To reach the northern coast of Spain, there is also a high-speed TGV Duplex from Paris Montparnasse which takes you to Hendaye on the Spanish border in about 4 hrs 45 mins. There you have to change to the local train service, Euskotren, which takes you to San Sebastian in 37 minutes. AVE are Spanish high-speed trains and are widely considered to be amongst the very best in the world. They operate between major Spanish cities at speeds upwards of 200 mph. The fastest train on the 386-mile Barcelona-Madrid route takes just 2 hours and 30 minutes. There are three classes on board the AVE. Turista (Standard) which gives ample legroom and access to the reasonably-priced cafeteria, Preferente (First) which includes a meal with wine, coffee and liqueurs in the ticket price, and Club (Super-First), which includes superior wines and a full meal. All seats, no matter the class of travel, have power sockets and headphone sockets for a range of music channels available. There are also ‘in flight’ films, which are usually in English with Spanish subtitles. Before boarding, each passenger must pass through a basic security check and boarding finishes 60 seconds prior to departure. Holders of Preferente and Club tickets are welcome to use the Club lounge with a range of snacks, drinks and newspapers (mainly Spanish, although there may be one or two English-language papers).