If your son really wants to see Spain, skip Portugal and with those extra 5 days you can visit another Spanish city using trains, and you would have more time to enjoy Rome.

I' m with everyone else about this. If your trip from home to Paris is a reasonable length, say less than 17-18 hours, I would move on from Paris to your furthest destination on that same day you arrive. You are going to be jet lagged anyway so you might as well use that day for travel and start a fresh the next day. This way you could leave about 5 nights for Paris at the end and lose one move. This gives you 11 days left. So you need to drop one destination at least to make this work well. Rome is probably the most obvious choice to drop. As an alternate plan you could drop Spain and Portugal and just do Italy which would make things much easier as you could use trains and visit Rome, Florence and Venice before returning to Paris. Prefer Easy jet to Ryanair.

Prefer Easy jet to Ryanair.>

especially because EasyJet I believe used a major Paris airport -Ryan air often to remote Beauvais- 40 miles or so from Paris.

Thanks everyone! We have made some adjustments & will be dropping Italy. Perhaps one day I will force my husband to take me there!! ;) So we will be extending our stays in Barcelona & Lisbon. And using the train between Lisbon & Porto. Really appreciate all your suggestions. I really was trying to shove too much into too short of time, but don't believe I will ever get back & wanted to SEE IT ALL! Merry Christmas!!!

Good move. Go back indeed later to Italy.
Enjoy your holiday.

That's a better plan! :-)

You might want to be sure you know your highest priorities in each city you still plan to visit, so you can have some confidence that you'll be able to fit them in.

Enjoy!

consider stopping off perhaps between Porto and Lisbon in say Obidos - a perfectly walled ancient city with a famous Parador or whatever they call those in Portugal built into the ancient ramparts - train service and then about only an hour from Lisbon by train.

Coimbra would be another neat stop on the direct train route.

https://www.google.com/search?q=obid...HSheBwQQsAQIGQ

Obidos!

Wow! Obidos looks amazing. Definitely worth looking into.
Thanks for the great idea!

I think train service to Obidos is limited and buses from a nearby rail station on the mainline may be better -takes you right up into town not drop you at the bottom of the hill!

cheers!

There are 4 daily direct regional train services from Lisbon to Obidos.

Of course, being a regional train, it will stop in 20+ stations along the way and take about 2h 20m. There are other options, but it's necessary to change the train lines.

Regarding flight\train, i don't know where did you get such idea.

There are daily flights from Lisbon to Porto and vice-versa and they take one hour. The fastest train connecting both cities takes 2 h 35 m.

So the fastest way from Lisbon to Obidos is by bus, it takes one hour.