My wife and I are thinking of planning a trip sometime around New Year's Day or the first week of January. As usual, we long to go to Madrid but we do want to start off somewhere else and maybe finish there.

We were planning about 7-9 days, so more than likely, we'd like to do 4-5 days in one city and 2 in Madrid to finish off the trip.

Does anyone have suggestions or recommendations based on the weather? We'd like to go to another country besides Spain first, but we are open to suggestions. My intitial thought was to spend the first few days in Lisbon, then head to Madrid.

Lisbon is good! But I would try to be in Madrid for la noche vieja and the celebrations leading up to los Reyes (January 6). If that doesn't fit in your palns, I would suggest that you consider spending some time in Andalucia (not the Costa del Sol) in Cadiz, Jerez de la frontera, Sevilla, Arcos de la frontera. The weather should be pretty nice. Anywhere in Spain you can hear the bells tolling the New Year from the Puerta del Sol in Madrid (on TVE) and people will be celebrating. Then you could wind up your visit in Madrid with the parade of los Reyes 5 Jan and all the accompanying celebrations.

...kk49827...gosh, what a loaded question!!.. So much depends on what you and your good lady would like to see or do and how you want to travel, i.e. fly and/or drive.
Let me throw a few names into the hat. Rome, Majorca/Ibiza,Barcelona,Andora,Gibraltar,Sevilla,Canarie Islands and Lisbon (as you mentioned). A number of these that i have listed will be cold in Jan...but then so will Madrid!!

Ok. I realized that I might need to add a little more info here.

We've been to the celebration at New Year's Eve in Madrid a few years ago. And while it might be fun to do again, it's definately not a must. I've heard of something in Lisbon on New Year's Eve, does anyone know?

Also, we are pretty skilled travelers but we do tend to like nice hotels to stay in these days. I've got some free Marriott hotel stays to use, so that would be a nice option as well.

Ideally, we'd like to not have the second part of the trip take too long to get to and not be too expensive either. Ok, any more thoughts for me?

Thanks for the help!