This, overall, was a most enjoyable holiday. The sights we saw far exceeded my expectations. The quality of the guides was excellent and I have, once again, learned a lot about an area I do not know well.

Apart from the first day visiting the Alhambra Palace, the weather was gorgeous, although very hot, which did cause some of our party to suffer.

The first hotel in Granada was OK, the middle two in Cordoba and Sevilla mediocre, and the last in Jerez excellent. The food in each hotel followed similar lines.

How did Saga/Titan do as a tour operator? Like a curate’s egg, good in parts.

The good bits: Transport to and from the airports, an experienced tour director who was a great fixer, excellent tour guides, generally well looked after, QuietVox receivers, top coach driver.

The not-so-good bits: There were 40 in our group of varying degrees of health and mobility. Too many for one man to manage. Viking, for example, would have provided two at least.

The organisation could have been better at times. Getting our room keys was a matter of the tour director getting hold of them on arrival and then handing them out. We could much more easily have collected them ourselves.

There was one day when we were to arrive at a new hotel in Sevilla. We wasted far too much time in Carmona on the way there – it would have been better if we had gone straight to the hotel, relaxed a bit and got some lunch before departing on the afternoon tour. As it turned out, we had about 10 minutes to cram some food down – some didn’t get anything at all to eat.

The tour director, although generally efficient, wasn’t the urbane, diplomatic, empathic type. Very hyperactive at times, fond of the sound of his own voice, telling us how hard he was working on our behalf, he was always right, his way was best and just tried to dominate every conversation. On the first day, he really threw his toys out of the pram when the microphone on the coach didn’t work. Frustrating, but he really should have kept his temper in check.

Don’t get me wrong – he did work hard and made our lives easier (his Spanish was excellent) but he did rather let you know about it. He suffered in comparison with the Viking tour directors we’ve had.

The booking team also lack flexibility, and the brochure does not always agree with the website. In the former, the option of a couple of days in Marbella at the end of the tour was offered, but this was not mentioned on the website, and I had booked the trip online. When we phoned the booking team and asked if we could add these days at the end, they said no as it had all been ticketed up and it was too late. No attempt to accommodate the request. Jean was very angry about that.

Would we use Saga/Titan again? Doubtful. I think we may have been a bit unlucky – there were a lot of Saga enthusiasts in our party who did voice their reservations at times about this tour – and the price was reasonable. Viking, I’m sure, would have done a better job and been more flexible, but would certainly have been more expensive. However, they don’t do this type of trip.

One thing is for sure – we will avoid Malaga Airport like the plague!

Next trip is with another Which? recommended tour provider, Riviera Travel. Let’s see how that goes, and I’ll be blogging about that in around 11 weeks. Should give you time to prepare….. 😉

Until then, bye for now.