Travel Planning Across Europe - Portugal to Athens in 6 weeks

Six weeks is not enough to cover Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Croatia and Greece.

We lived in Europe in the late 80s, early 90s when rail was subsidized by governments. Now, rail is more pricey than the discounted airfares available.

There once was a good overnight train from Lisbon to Madrid, but you don't want to do overnight. Still, if you do it in the daytime, it will be a long trip.

You will be going in October and November, it will be a bit chilly at times, but in the Med not so bad.

Rail from Lisbon to Seville is not as great an option as to Madrid, so I recommend Madrid after Lisbon. Spend a couple of days there and more days for day trips to Toledo and Segovia. The Prado Museum is wonderful.

Barcelona would be my next recommendation. Spend 3-4 days there and don't miss going inside Sagrada Familia. Barcelona Day Tours has some affordable tours that you could consider.

Not sure if you want to visit Provence or the South of France, but there is much to see there, but your have to consider other places. Italy is filled with history and art and not to be missed. Rome, Florence and Venice should take about two weeks of your time. Then you probably will have used up 3-4 weeks of your time. There is lots to see in Slovenia and Croatia, but it is a long train ride to Athens. Consider discount air to Athens. You need 4-5 days in Athens, don't miss the Acropolis and the great museums in Athens. Also, day trips to Delphi, the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion and Corinth.

If you visit Croatia, Split, Trogir and Dubrovnik are great.

I'm in Thira as of 3 hours ago, in Firostefani to be exact, a short (so they tell me) walk from Fira. My shuttle driver from the ferry told me that he leaves in 5 days for the winter, since the tourist season is almost over and there won't be any work for him until April. So consider carefully if you want to spend a week on Santorini. Do allow time for Athens if you are at all interested in archaeology/history. It's a very nice place to spend 3-4 days, seeing the sights, eating great Greek food, exploring the neighborhoods. I just spent a week on Crete, in Chania and Heraklion, wonderful!

From Portugal, the best way out is generally by air, even if you want to go to Spain (highly recommend it!). Andalucia is terrific (Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada and more), Madrid has 3 wonderful art museums and day trips - including Toledo, which is actually better as a 1-2 night stay. The trains are very good. Barcelona is one of my very favorite cities in the world. You could make your way along the French coastline by train, then continue by train to Italy for as long as possible Or skip France and fly to anywhere in Italy for as long as possible.

Another excellent destination is Hungary, Budapest is great and there are smaller cities that also have a lot to offer. Vienna is a 3-4 hour train ride away.

Use bahn.com for train schedules. For flights, go to the wiki page for any airport and look for the "passenger" section, it will show all the airllines and destinations from that airport.

If you look at one of the ferry booking websites such as Aferry or Directferries, you'll find there are three routes from Barcelona to the west coast of Italy. So if you moved next to Spain then you could spend a few weeks touring by rail/aeroplane, ending in Barcelona and then moving eastwards. After a couple of weeks in Italy, there are also, ferries between the east coast of Italy across the Adriatic - though I don't know how straightforward it is to carry on from those Balkan ports to Athens. (Edit - inspired by Balso's post, I had a look at the seat61 website and he gives a fairly straightforward route for getting between Patras and Athens. He might have some other suggestions worth considering too. https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Athens.htm ).

I'm not sure where you are in Portugal, but if you're in the south then there are regular coach services to Sevilla from Lagos and, perhaps, other cities.

With 6 weeks I wouldn't travel entirely overland, I would bypass Croatia. There is a ferry from Bari, Italy to Patras, which is "not too far" from Athens. Company is Anek lines, and the trip takes a night and a morning, so very time efficient.