My cousin and I are heading to Spain (and a few days in Lisbon) for three weeks in June and could use all the help we can get! We are flying into Madrid and leave out of Lisbon, as of right now we're kind of planning following this path:

Madrid - Zaratoga (for a night) - Barcelona - Valencia - Somewhere between Valencia and Murcia? - Murcia - Granada - Seville - Lisbon

We'd like to do some hiking somewhere along the way, a moderate day trip of sorts....

Any advice, comments, or suggestions on where to stay (as recent college grads having to enter the real world after this, we're looking for relatively cheap hostels to stay in each city!), eat, visit, explore or even how long you'd recommend to stay in each city would be amazing! There's just sooooo much to do we want to do as much as we can, but not miss too much along the way!

***Sorry, Zaragoza! (It's too late for my brain to work tonight!!!)

Also...I know this post is really general, I'm just pretty overwhelmed with all the guidebooks, webpages, and forums I've read and trying to nail down at least a better idea of where we want to go! Any knowledge you have will be a huge help! Thanks!

Transport is an issue

Trains are good, you meet people and relatively cheap
Internal flights are getting better but still not very cheap

Might add Cordoba

Good walking in Grenada area and may be still cool enough in June but beware it gets hot.

Fodorites like Rhonda (no idea why) but there is also Jerez

Spanish towns have very reasonable 2 star hotels which you can surf out. For instance the Windsor in Barcelona is clean and tidy with a very nice breakfast cafe next door but 2. Similar sorts of places exist in each town so you don't have to go international all/any of the time.

There is a legal requirement to offer a "meal of the day" for a low price (includes wine etc) so at about 12am you can feed up well in any small town which helps to stretch the Euros

So I suggest to areas of investigation Transport and major cities where to stay.

Grenada, Sevilla, Cordoba you can stay pretty much in the centre. Barcelona stay inland outside of the Ramblas

Madrid either central but I've stayed happily in the gay part (not gay) but avoided the street walker areas.

Lisbon can be a real problem to get rooms so book early

Finally if you have a car all the time where will you park it. A lot of these cities have small streets and so you may end up with on street parking and having ot clear out every night.

Try to use public transport and just book cars for special events

For hiking, you might check into Las Alpujarras. You can reach it by bus (about 3 hours, as I recall) from Granada, but you would probably have to plan on an overnight there with a half-day hike before dinner and then another half-day hike the next day. Hope that helps!

Tapas bar in Zaragoza:
*Los Vitorinos. Calle José de la Hera, 6. A must go.
Between Valencia and Murcia are Benidorm and Alicante. Murcia is bored.