First time to Europe
 

My and friends and I are heading to Europe for our spring break next year (we will be college freshman) to do a short missions trip. But, we will have time to do some sightseeing.

Our main goal is to go to Portugal and then either France OR Spain. (Leaning towards France)

In total, we have about seven days.

Is there anything you would recommend checking out? We are not 100% where we would be inside the countries, but we believe for Portugal we will probably be around Lisbon.

Enjoy Portugal for the full seven days. After Lisbon either go north to the many worthwhile towns or south to places like Evora and the beach.

Seven days is a short time. Portugal has enough to offer to spend all time there. Besides Lisbon, the Algarve has spectacular beaches.

If you really want to see another country within seven days the only reasonable option is to take a direct flight from Lisbon to a destination in France to avoid losing too much time for travelling. For your transatlantic flights you need open-jaw. So you would fly into Lisbon, then from Lisbon to either Paris or Nice and back to the USA from there. That would work.

In this case, you should probably spend the first three days in Lisbon and surroundings, then have half a day for travelling and then three days either in Paris or on the Côte d'Azur. Both destinations in France have lots of attractions for every taste and travelling style.

Thanks for the tips!

Yes, if we did do France we planned on taking a flight there to save some time.

The 3/3 split sounds pretty good, too.

You will lose a good part of the day flying from Lisbon to Paris, so now you have 6 1/2 plus whatever you lose flying across the Atlantic.