Where would you spend a week in one place in Spain, Portugal, or SW France?

It looks like it is sort of midway between Lisbon and Madrid but not close enough to do a day trip to either. What is within an hour and half that would make a good day trip?

Someplace in the Herault department of France (Beziers, Montpelier, etc.) would be close to beaches and vineyards. Possible day trips: the Camargue, Arles, Nimes, Millau Viaduc, Carcassone.

To wump Spain and Portugal at one swipe, consider Extremadura (Badajoz ?) or adjacent Alentejo (Elvas ?). I'd probably go for the latter.

I'm confused. Do you mean you want to do a day trip to the national capitals, or are you looking for day trips close to Badajoz and Elvas? Or do you want to be just slightly outside the capitals and do day trips elsewhere from there?

Tes, this does seem like an excellent choice. Is there a particular town, Gite etc you would recommend?

Ed,I am looking to rent one house for a week and stay sleep there every night. We are looking for day trips from where ever the house is. Are there good day trips from Alentejo- say an hour and half one way.

Sure. Evora, Portalegre, huge natural parks, walled hill towns (Monsaraz is the best), the only double stone henge I've ever seen, the whole lake system down on the Spanish border - - they're all within an hour of Elvas and came off of my fingers as fast as I could type. That's a week's worth right there. If I scratched my head, ran out to an hour and a half, looked at a map, and noodled for a minute, I could come up with enough for a month. Go out two and a half hours and spend the night and you're in the middle of coastal Algarve. And that's just in Portugal with no idea of what your interests are. I'm a complete dud for places to stay. We're out of our own beds for more than six months of the year and never make reservations. I can tell you the two I stayed in last week because they were in a chain. Two weeks back and I've no idea. My wife's traveling now and I have no idea where she's staying - - she's at the end of SpeedDial #1 somwhere in Argentina.

Thank you Ed. I will get out my map and guidebooks and check it out.

Mike, we stayed near Pezenas, a nice town with good services plus a historic and picturesque old quarter. Due to a couple of issues with the house we rented, I can't recommend anything specific. There are a number of properties available around there. Languedoc-Roussillon has a very interesting history and much to see.

I've had a revised thought: Evora. It can get touristy as hell, but only at mid-day when the bus hoards show up. Early in the morning and later in the afternoon it's really nice. If you're going to be making day trips youself, or stay a bit out of the center, you won't even notice it. It would place Extremadura at your desired range limit, but put Lisbon within it. It would make coastal Algarve within two hours. The changes to anything else would be so minor that I'd have to look at a map and think real hard to see if there was actually a differnce. It also has a larger varitey of places to eat, all of which are good, except the little row where the Chinese place is - - all of those empty your wallet and give you a belly ache.

I think Evora is a better idea and fits our travel style better. Thanks