Lisbon or Dubrovnik for a week in September, as part of a month long trip.
Hello. We are planning a month long trip to Europe next year(postponed from this year). We are planning on 4 countries. We’re planning on a second trip to Switzerland for 8 nights, then a third trip to France for 8 nights. Then we want to go to a new country for about a week, and end with a first trip to Greece for 9 nights. We are having a hard time deciding on the third country. Dubrovnik looks absolutely beautiful, and it’s a significantly shorter flight to Athens. But I’m not sure it has enough to fill a week. We love taking day trips from a base city, and the day trips from Dubrovnik seem rather far and long. On the other hand Lisbon isn’t as immediately gorgeous as Dubrovnik, but looks like it has more to fill a week, and tons of easy day trips. But Lisbon is a significantly longer flight to Athens(4 hours vs 1.5). We want a location we can fly to direct from Geneva, and to Athens. So locations like Split don’t quite work. Can anyone advise on how to decide between these 2 cities? Any suggestions for different locations are also welcome. We love beautiful scenery, interesting culture, good food, day trips, interesting old architecture, and just wandering the tiny streets and charming neighborhoods finding spontaneous things to see and do. If it helps, we have already been to Italy(3 times), France(2 times), Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany(2 times), Austria, Belgium, London, and Spain(Barcelona and Costa Brava). Our favorite countries have been Italy, France and Spain. We would be in the third country around the third week in September, and the weather looks pretty similar for both cities. Thanks helping us decide.
Edit: Thank you. We decided to listen to good advice and decided we were taking on too much for this trip. The distances between countries and flight lengths were just too much. So we are reluctantly going to skip Lisbon and add extra time to Greece. We would have somewhere between 9-14 days for Greece, but we still want to stay in only 2 locations and take day trips from there. We were originally going to spend 4 nights in Athens and 4 in Nafplio, and we can still do that, but we want to explore other options. If we stay on an island, would want to fly non-stop into one location from either Geneva or Zurich, stay there 7-8 nights, then fly to Athens for maybe for 5-6 nights with a day trip to Hydra. Thinking Crete, Corfu, Rhodes, Santorini? We won’t have a car. We want to see natural beauty, seaside locations, great food, easy transport, interesting towns to wander. What would you suggest? Or should we just stick to our Athens/Nafplio plan, maybe add a third location on the Peloponnese? Thanks so much.
Posted Apr 5, 2026, 2:58 AM UTC