We will be visiting Spain for the first time this October for a milestone birthday for my husband. We are taking a Mediterranean cruise, departing from Barcelona and ending in Rome. Our plan is depart the US a week early to explore Spain prior to boarding our ship. I am trying to decide on our itinerary and most importantly (for now) where we will fly into. My first thought was to fly into Madrid and then after a couple days, take the train to Barcelona. However, those are both big cities and my husband doesn't love cities (Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Florence), even Bruges was maybe too big for him. I would like to fly into a location which requires only 1 connection from our home; the options are: Barcelona, Madrid, Malaga, Bilbao, Alicante, and Santiago de Compostela. I have already researched how far the other places are from Barcelona so understand the travel times we may be in for. We would prefer to use public transportation but are willing to consider renting a car for the right places. We like interesting topologies, nature, people watching, architecture, good food and drinks, mindless meandering, water (river, lake, ocean) is a plus. Some locations we've been and liked, to give you an idea, are (France) Honfleur, St. Malo, Carcassonne, Nice, (Italy) Montepulciano, Verona, Venice, (Germany) Rothenburg OBT, St. Goar, Munich.
I do have the Rick Steves guidebook on order. What small or quaint/charming/breathtaking towns do you recommend? What would you do in terms of travel into Spain. Thanks much!