Gather at a local Barcelona restaurant for a farewell dinner with your fellow travellers. Share a final meal together in the Catalan capital and raise a toast to the places and people encountered across the Iberian Peninsula.

Unlike an ordinary evening meal, this is a hosted group occasion devoted to conversation and reflection. It brings the shared experience of travelling through Spain and Portugal together around one table.

• 5 Dinner (D)
• 14 Breakfast (B)
• 2 Lunch (L)

• Madrid: Visit the Prado Museum with an art historian who places key works within their historical setting. With your historian’s expert guidance, you’ll examine paintings by Velázquez, Goya, Titian and Rubens, noting their connection to royal patronage and the broader European tradition. Learn how the museum, founded in 1819, became a principal repository for Spain’s royal collections and major works from across the continent.
• Granada: Visit the Alhambra Palace with a Local Expert and walk through its courtyards, carved plasterwork and palace rooms from the Nasrid period. You’ll see how water channels, gardens and intricate detail define the complex, and how this hilltop site shaped Granada’s cultural and political story for centuries.

Share a welcome dinner at a local Madrid restaurant with your Travel Director and fellow travellers. Settle in over food and wine while getting to know the people travelling with you.

The meal offers an introduction to madrileño dining, where conversation is as much a part of the evening as the dishes on the table. It is a hosted occasion rather than a routine hotel dinner.

• Hand sanitizer is freely available on board for you to use throughout the day.

Insight Vacations

• Business class coach with extended leg room
• Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
• 4 & 5-star stays

Explore Madrid’s historic neighbourhoods with a Local Expert, travelling through the Old Quarter to trace the capital’s beginnings as a medieval citadel. See how its compact streets, market squares and civic spaces shaped the growing city.

Your expert connects those early foundations with Habsburg Madrid and the capital that developed around it. This guided introduction gives context to the city’s architecture rather than simply passing its landmarks.

Visit the Prado Museum with an art historian for a guided encounter with paintings by Velázquez, Goya, Titian and Rubens. Examine selected works in their historical setting and hear how artists portrayed power, faith and everyday life.

Founded in 1819, the Prado became a home for Spain’s royal collections. Your historian’s perspective reveals the connections between royal patronage and European painting across the galleries.

Walk Segovia’s medieval streets with a Local Expert and view the Alcázar, the fortified royal complex rising above the city. Continue to the Roman aqueduct, whose tiers of granite arches carried water from the mountains.

The walk brings together Segovia’s Roman engineering and its later royal history. Looking closely at the aqueduct’s stonework and the Alcázar’s commanding position reveals why both have become enduring symbols of the city.

Take in a view of Ávila’s medieval walls as your route passes the fortified Castilian city. Their long line of towers and battlements makes the historic centre’s defensive outline visible from a distance.

Built largely from the late 11th century onward, the walls remain among Spain’s most recognisable medieval fortifications. This is a scenic view rather than a guided visit, offering a sense of the city’s scale and setting.

Explore Salamanca with a Local Expert, studying its golden sandstone streets and the arcades of Plaza Mayor. See the cathedral and university buildings that give the historic centre its distinctive character.

Founded in the 13th century, Salamanca’s university helped establish the city as a European centre of learning. Your guide draws attention to Plateresque architectural detail, whose intricate stone ornament rewards a closer look.

Enter the port wine cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia and walk corridors lined with casks. Learn how ageing and blending shape different styles before tasting port, including an introduction to tawnies and vintages.

Across the Douro from Porto, Gaia has been a centre of port storage and trade for centuries. The visit connects wines grown upriver in the Douro Valley with the export houses established on this riverbank.

Explore Porto’s riverside cityscape, looking out for colourful houses, tiled churches and bridges spanning the Douro. The city’s steep streets and river crossings reveal how closely its identity is tied to trade and the water.

Glazed azulejo tiles bring scenes and patterns to church facades, while the bridges frame views between Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia. This city exploration complements the port-cellar visit with a broader sense of place.

Explore the Sanctuary of Fátima, Portugal’s major pilgrimage destination. View the Chapel of the Apparitions, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary and the broad esplanade designed to receive large gatherings.

The sanctuary developed after the reported Marian apparitions of 1917. Its scale and quiet devotional spaces offer insight into the continuing importance of pilgrimage in Portuguese religious life, whether you approach the visit through faith, history or culture.

Walk inside Óbidos’s medieval walls through narrow lanes of whitewashed houses and small churches. Sample ginja, the local cherry liqueur, during your visit to this fortified Portuguese town.

Óbidos has Roman roots and was granted as a royal wedding gift in the 13th century. Its enclosed street pattern preserves an intimate sense of medieval town life, while the liqueur tasting introduces a tradition associated with the region.

Explore Lisbon with a Local Expert, travelling through the spacious avenues of the Lower Town and around Pombal Square. In Belém, view the Monument to the Discoveries and Belém Tower beside the Tagus.

The orderly Baixa district reflects the rebuilding that followed the 1755 earthquake. Belém’s riverfront, by contrast, evokes Portugal’s maritime era, when voyages departing from Lisbon linked the city to distant parts of the world.

Taste pastéis de Belém from the pastry shop that has made them since 1837. Bite through crisp, layered pastry into warm custard, traditionally finished with a dusting of cinnamon.

The bakery’s closely guarded recipe is part of Belém’s culinary identity. Sampling a pastry at its place of origin adds a flavourful dimension to the neighbourhood’s maritime landmarks and offers a small, tangible connection to Lisbon’s long-standing food traditions.

Visit Lisbon’s National Coach Museum to examine royal carriages dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Look closely at their carved decoration, painted panels and changing designs.

Used for state ceremonies and diplomatic occasions, these coaches were moving displays of status as well as transport. The collection reveals how craftsmanship and court protocol evolved across European royal households, with details that are easy to miss in photographs.

Choose a guided walk through Seville’s Santa Cruz quarter, following narrow lanes into small plazas and past enclosed courtyards. A Local Expert explains the street pattern shaped by the city’s medieval Jewish community.

The district’s intimate layout contrasts with Seville’s grand public monuments. Its surviving streets offer a way to understand the neighbourhood’s layered social history through the spaces people lived in, rather than through a single landmark.

Choose a panoramic drive around Seville to take in several of its districts and landmarks from a broader perspective. See the riverfront near the Torre del Oro and the green surroundings of María Luisa Park.

The route also passes avenues associated with the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, an event that reshaped parts of the city. This seated alternative to the Santa Cruz walk highlights Seville’s changing urban scale and river setting.

Step inside Seville Cathedral, the vast Gothic church built on the site of the city’s former mosque. Walk through its nave and chapels, see the tomb of Christopher Columbus and view the Giralda rising beside it.

The Giralda began as the minaret of a 12th-century Almohad mosque. Together, tower and cathedral make the site’s Islamic and Christian architectural layers visible within one of Seville’s defining monuments.

Visit Seville’s Cristina Heeren Foundation to meet students learning flamenco guitar, singing and dance. Try a few basic steps and watch the young artists perform, gaining a closer view of the discipline behind the performance.

Flamenco is a living Andalusian art form, passed on through intensive teaching as well as performance. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® visit supports the foundation’s educational work and offers direct contact with the people preserving its traditions.

Explore the Rock of Gibraltar with a Local Expert and visit St Michael’s Cave, where natural limestone formations fill the cavern. Look out for the Rock’s Barbary macaques while taking in its commanding coastal views.

Known in antiquity as one of the Pillars of Hercules, Gibraltar stands beside the strait linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Its position makes the visit distinctive for both its landscape and its long strategic history.

Take in Mediterranean views along the Costa del Sol on a scenic route past the region’s coastal resorts. Watch the shoreline unfold, with the sea on one side and Andalusia’s rising terrain on the other.

This is a scenic drive rather than a guided site visit. It provides a look at the landscape and resort towns that have made this stretch of southern Spain a long-established Mediterranean holiday destination.

Walk through Alfarnatejo’s whitewashed village centre, surrounded by the mountains of inland Andalusia. See the 18th-century Iglesia del Santo Cristo de Cabrilla and take in the scale of a town with fewer than 500 residents.

The visit offers a view of rural community life away from Spain’s larger cities. Its quiet streets and mountain setting provide context for the local food traditions shared during the home-hosted lunch.

Visit a rural olive mill near Alfarnatejo and taste several local olive oils with freshly made bread. Hear how harvest timing, growing conditions and the age of the trees can influence each oil’s flavour.

Olive cultivation has shaped Andalusia’s landscape and cooking for generations. Tasting the oils side by side turns an everyday kitchen ingredient into a closer look at the region’s agricultural knowledge and the groves surrounding its villages.

Join a local family in their Alfarnatejo home for a home-cooked Andalusian lunch. In a small group, share dishes made with fresh regional produce and talk with your hosts around their table.

This hosted meal offers more than a taste of local recipes. Conversation about the town and its everyday routines gives you a personal introduction to rural Andalusian hospitality, in the setting where the food is prepared and shared.

Explore Granada’s Alhambra with a Local Expert, walking through palace spaces, courtyards and gardens. Study the intricate carved plasterwork, fountains and water channels that give the complex its remarkable texture.

Developed by the Nasrid rulers from the 13th century, the hilltop citadel was both a seat of power and a carefully composed environment. Your expert reveals how architecture, water and garden design express the cultural history of medieval Granada.

Get your bearings in Valencia as your Travel Director points out the Old City’s surviving gateways and the streets shaped by centuries of growth. See the contrasting forms of the City of Arts and Sciences.

This orientation places Valencia’s medieval fabric alongside its contemporary architecture. The shift between historic streets and modern cultural buildings gives a clear sense of how the city has expanded while retaining traces of its earlier boundaries.

Meet a chef in a family-run Valencia restaurant and watch a paella cooking demonstration. Learn how the pan’s heat, the stock, the rice and the order of ingredients contribute to the finished dish.

Sit down to eat the paella you have seen prepared, noticing its layered flavours and prized socarrat, the crisp rice at the base. Experiencing the method in Valencia offers insight into a dish rooted in the region’s food culture.

See Peñíscola’s 14th-century castle rising above its old town on a limestone headland. The fortress stands between stretches of Mediterranean shore, creating one of the coast’s most distinctive silhouettes.

The castle’s dramatic setting has also made it a film location, including for El Cid. This experience is a view of the exterior, not a castle entry, with the sea and fortified town forming the principal highlights.

Visit a cava bodega in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia for a tasting paired with a light lunch. Learn how fermentation in the bottle and ageing on the lees give this Catalan sparkling wine its texture and character.

Vineyards around the town have supplied cava producers since the 19th century. Tasting the wines near their source connects the finished glass with Catalonia’s traditional-method winemaking and the landscape behind it.

Explore Barcelona with a Local Expert on a drive along Passeig de Gràcia and through the ordered streets of the Eixample. Look for decorative facades, wrought-iron details and the changing skyline around the Sagrada Família.

The route shows how 19th-century expansion created space for the expressive architecture of Catalan Modernisme. Your expert helps distinguish the Eixample’s geometric street plan from the imaginative buildings that make its avenues so recognisable.

Visit Gaudí’s Sagrada Família to see its soaring, tree-like columns, vaulted nave and coloured light from the stained-glass windows. A Local Expert provides context for the basilica’s extraordinary design.

Interior access may be restricted by masses, pilgrim visits or official ceremonies. If tickets are unavailable, visit the Art Nouveau Hospital de Sant Pau instead and admire the Sagrada Família’s exterior with your Local Expert.

Choose an evening meal at a family-run Lisbon restaurant known for traditional Portuguese seafood. The experience offers a chance to explore the coastal flavours associated with the country’s long relationship with the Atlantic.

Expect the atmosphere of a locally run dining room rather than a routine hotel meal. This Optional Experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour; the restaurant and dishes may vary.

Choose an excursion from Lisbon to the Portuguese Riviera, the Atlantic coastline associated with seaside resorts, surfing and a long history of royal visitors. Take in a different side of the Lisbon region beyond the capital’s streets.

The coast’s mix of beaches and resort heritage has also provided settings linked to James Bond. This Optional Experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour; specific stops will be confirmed during your trip.