My husband and I are planning a trip to Spain/Portugal for May 2018. Right now nothing is set it stone, but we hope for 10-12 days. I know there is so much to see and we won't see it all - but we need help narrowing it down. We are sure we want to see Lisbon and Madrid. It seems it may be easiest to skip Barcelona - is this a mistake? I have read great things about Seville. Is a trip to the Canary Islands worth it (if we could add a few days on)? Some other possibilities we've read about are Faro, Granada, Córdoba. We will most likely do 3-4 overnight cities with multiple day trips. We would love suggestions on which cities to use as a base and which are worth a day trip.
As for us, we like to spend 2-3 nights in a city, we don't typically do more than that so we are ok hopping around every few days. We would like a beach day (or 2) during our trip as a quick refresh with so much traveling. We will use trains mostly, but are ok doing a short flight. We will be using points to fly and would definitely like to leave from Madrid (it's the most direct) but can fly into Lisbon or Barcelona (or most other cities).