Spain

I can tell you what we did: fly into Barcelona; 3 nights Barcelona; high-speed train to Madrid; 4 nights Madrid with a day trip via high-speed train to Sevilla and a 1/2 day trip to Toledo. This worked well for us, but we did have a hired guide meet us at the train station in Sevilla since it's a long day trip (2.5 hours each way via train) and we wanted to be sure to use our time in that wonderful city wisely. More info is available on my travel blog at http://moltogentileitalia.blogspot.com/2009/01/report-from-spain.html. This includes hotels, restaurants, sites, approximate costs, etc. We flew into Barcelona and out of Madrid.

I would ask when you're going. Spain has plenty of local festivals that are awesome, such as the bulls in July (I've done that twice in Valencia). Unless there's a city you really want to see, check out what sort of festivals are going on when you're planning on going, you can really dig the local culture that way.

Also go to Valencia because Valencia is awesome. This is a completely biased opinion because I have family there, but I am giving it anyway.

Alex, speaking of biased viewpoints, there is an old Catalan saying, "valencià i home de bé no potser". (Valenciano and a good man, impossible.)

You WOULD say that, you're from Barcelona!

Damn catalans.

(I joke, I joke - don't tell my Valencian family, but Barcelona is a great city. Can't make paella worth crap though.)

Alex, If you really want to get a Catalan's goat, just say that he speaks a dialect of Valenciano. Works every time.

We've hijacked this thread, and gone way off topic, but I hope that the conversations serves as an illustration of the multicultural dynamic present in modern Spain. Truly, it's a land of many different cultures. Anyplace the OP goes, she'll find interesting people and great food.