Winter bike vacation to southern Spain vs southern Portugal or maybe even Tuscany

[litcrazy]

Our son is teaching in Kyrgyzstan for the year, exactly 12 times zones away from us. We (my wife, son, daughter and I) all overlap for about 10 days of vacation from about Christmas to January 5th or so.

The travel time from Kyrgyzstan to Albuquerque is too much for that length of time, so we're thinking we'd like to meet in the middlish in either Spain or Portugal.

For my 50th, we went to Italy as a family a few years ago, and loved biking in Tuscany and especially the Dolomites. Since Kyrgyzstan is rather cold and snowy, we're thinking it would be fun to gather in either southern Spain or Portugal where we could maybe visit a city or two, and also stay in a remote area with beautiful and hopefully affordable accomodations and cycling. Either road or gravel. We'll likely be renting bikes as it worked well in Italy and feels easier.

We're locked into these Christmas-New Year dates and definitely aren't a cost-is-no-concern family. It's winter and peak season for holiday travel, so we'd love to go to a place that doesn't have snow or endless rain or mud, but that perhaps isn''t perceived a winter destination. We don't mind cold or steep or rugged as long as it's pretty and good biking.

I know many folks here have biked in those parts, so I'd love some suggestions as we're trying to narrow our options, and start our planning.