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Switzerland to Portugal…

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Hi! Looking for thoughts, advice and recommendations…
We will are starting our trip in Switzerland (trekking) and ending in Portugal to meeting friends. Looking for suggestions on a route and what to do and see along the way once we leave Zurich for Lisbon. We have approximately three weeks to make the journey. We are interested in the smaller villages/towns, somewhat off the beaten path, if possible, as we will be traveling by train. With that being said, a car rental is not out of the equation if needed. The one thing we do know, is that we would like to see some of the basque region, of France or Spain, it does not matter.

If anyone has a village/town that they particularly like or thoughts on what not to miss en route we would be excited to hear about it!

I will thank everyone in advance for their time and look forward to learning about new places to visit!
Lisa

Posted by
1548 posts

Travel through Spain is pretty limited by train routes, but renting a car one way may not be realistic either. I will suggest renting a car for a day if you get to Barcelona and driving to Andorra.

Posted by
2532 posts

If I was doing this trip I would follow this route:
- Switzerland - Milano - Genoa, then along the Mediterranean coast to Perpignan, on to Hendaye, Then San Sebastian, Bilbao.
You could then continue along the North Coast of Spain till A Coruna on slow trains, or dip down to Madrid and then on the Galicia. From Galicia you can easily get to Porto by train.

There are a lot of places you can stop at. Genoa is worth a few days. San Remo is nice. So are Nice, Avignon, Nimes, Monpelier, Sète, Perpignan, Carcassonne, Toulouse, San Sebastian, Bilbao, Santiago de Compostela, A Coruna, Vigo...

And all easily done by train.

Posted by
2 posts

Ah, yes KGC, we are finding that it would be rather difficult to rent a car for this trip. We’ve been working out different scenarios, but none appear to lessen the difficulty of moving from country to country with a rental. As you suggest, perhaps a rental once we arrive in Spain or a rental from a home base… thank you!

WengenK, goodness, there are towns we have not hear of before. We will look at the route you have suggested and research all of the villages/towns mentioned. With the suggested route we can start to look up trains from the larger cities to see where the smaller towns are situated and how reasonable it would be to plan a visit or a stay.

Thank you two for your time and thoughts! KGC, confirmed our thoughts on a rental car. And WengenK, a first route to research for our journey!

Can’t thank you enough!

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