Insight Vacations

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

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

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

• 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.

Meet your Travel Director and small group over dinner at a local restaurant in Madrid. Share a meal and get to know the people travelling with you across Spain and Portugal.

The gathering offers a relaxed introduction to Spain’s capital, where older neighbourhood squares sit alongside the grand avenues of the Bourbon era. It is an opportunity to settle into the journey through conversation as well as food.

Explore Madrid’s Old Quarter with a Local Expert, following compact streets and market squares around the site of the city’s medieval beginnings. See how civic spaces developed as Madrid became the centre of Habsburg rule.

Your guide traces the district’s growth from medieval citadel to royal capital, revealing a different scale of city beneath Madrid’s later boulevards. The street pattern and gathering places make its early history visible at ground level.

Visit the Prado Museum with an art historian to examine paintings by Velázquez, Goya, Titian and Rubens. Expert commentary connects what you see on the canvas with the artists’ patrons and the periods in which they worked.

Founded in 1819, the Prado holds works drawn from Spain’s royal collections alongside major European paintings. Its galleries offer a concentrated view of art, power and cultural change across several centuries.

Walk Segovia’s historic centre with a Local Expert and view the Alcázar, the fortified royal complex rising above the city. Examine the Roman aqueduct’s towering granite arches and learn how they carried water from the nearby mountains.

The route brings Segovia’s Roman engineering, medieval streets and Castilian royal history into view. Seeing the aqueduct at street level makes the scale and precision of this ancient structure especially clear.

Explore Salamanca with a Local Expert, walking its central streets to Plaza Mayor and the university quarter. Study the sandstone facades and intricate Plateresque decoration that give the historic centre its distinctive character.

Salamanca’s university was founded in the 13th century and helped establish the city as a European centre of learning. Your guide places its academic buildings within a wider story of scholarship, civic life and architecture.

Visit the port wine cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, across the Douro River from Porto, and join a guided tasting of port styles, including tawny and ruby. Learn how ageing conditions and blending influence their colour and flavour.

Wine from the Douro Valley has been stored and matured on this riverbank for centuries. The cellar visit connects the vineyards upstream with the shipper traditions and Atlantic trade that brought port to markets abroad.

Discover Porto with your Travel Director on an orientation through its riverside quarters and stepped historic streets. Take in the medieval Ribeira and the districts shaped by the city’s long history of trade.

Look out for landmarks such as São Bento station’s painted tile panels and the Clérigos Tower, a reference point above the old centre. Together, Porto’s riverfront and hillside streets show how commerce shaped the city’s layout and character.

Explore the Sanctuary of Fátima, Portugal’s major pilgrimage destination, and view the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, the Chapel of the Apparitions and the broad esplanade used for large gatherings.

The sanctuary developed following the reported Marian apparitions of 1917. Its open spaces and places of prayer offer insight into the site’s continuing importance to pilgrims, whether encountered as a place of faith, history or quiet reflection.

Walk within the medieval walls of Óbidos, following narrow lanes past whitewashed houses and small churches. Sample ginja, the town’s cherry liqueur, traditionally served in a small cup that may be made of chocolate.

Óbidos retains the close-knit street pattern of a fortified settlement and became associated with Portugal’s queens after a 13th-century royal gift. Its walls, domestic facades and local flavour make its history tangible on a short walk.

Explore Lisbon with a Local Expert, tracing the orderly streets of Baixa before heading to Belém. View the Monument to the Discoveries and Belém Tower beside the Tagus, and taste a crisp, cinnamon-dusted pastel de Belém.

Baixa’s planned layout emerged from rebuilding after the 1755 earthquake, while Belém’s riverside landmarks recall Portugal’s maritime era. The custard tart adds an edible local tradition: the Belém bakery has made its pastries since 1837.

Visit Lisbon’s National Coach Museum to view royal carriages dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries. Examine the craftsmanship and elaborate decoration of vehicles used for court ceremonies and diplomatic occasions.

The collection reveals how a coach could communicate rank as clearly as it provided transport. Changes in construction and ornament across the displays offer a close look at European court life and protocol over several centuries.

Explore Seville with a Local Expert, viewing the Giralda and Seville Cathedral’s exterior and walking through the former Jewish quarter. See María Luisa Park’s tiled fountains, pavilions and planted avenues.

The route brings together traces of Seville’s Islamic, Christian and Jewish histories. María Luisa Park adds a later chapter: its landscaped spaces were developed for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, giving the city a setting of gardens and richly patterned architectural detail.

Meet students at Seville’s Cristina Heeren Foundation, learn a few basic flamenco rhythms and movements with an instructor, and watch young artists perform. See how dance, singing and guitar are taught as connected disciplines.

The school works to preserve and pass on Andalusia’s flamenco traditions through education. This MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® visit supports that training, offering a closer understanding of the practice behind a performance while contributing to the foundation’s work.

Explore Gibraltar with a Local Expert, travelling up the Rock and visiting St. Michael’s Cave. Look closely at the limestone formations inside the cavern and keep watch for the Barbary macaques that live on the Rock.

Your guide places the territory’s British and Mediterranean influences in the context of its streets and military history. The cave’s mineral-shaped chambers provide a striking natural contrast to Gibraltar’s compact town and fortified landscape.

Walk through Alfarnatejo with your Travel Director, passing its quiet squares and church, before visiting an old olive grove in the surrounding hills. At a rural mill, taste local olive oils with fresh bread and learn how harvest and growing conditions affect their flavour.

Share a home-cooked lunch with a local family, featuring seasonal Andalusian food and conversation about life in the area. The combined visit offers a personal view of the region’s agriculture and table traditions.

Explore Granada with a Local Expert and visit the Alhambra, the palace and fortress complex overlooking the city. Walk through courtyards and gardens, studying the carved plasterwork and architectural details associated with Nasrid Granada.

Your guide connects the monument with the streets below its ridge and the city’s layered history. Water, planting and intricate ornament help convey how the Alhambra’s rulers shaped spaces for both ceremony and private life.

See Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, the sculptural cultural complex set in the former Turia riverbed. Get your bearings in the Old City with your Travel Director, passing surviving medieval gateways and streets shaped by centuries of expansion.

The two settings show Valencia at different scales: a historic street network and a modern complex built into a transformed river landscape. The orientation helps reveal how the city has adapted its public spaces over time.

Sit down to a traditional paella dinner with your group at a local restaurant in Valencia. Taste the rice, stock and seasoning at the heart of a dish closely associated with this region.

Paella has its roots in the fields and kitchens around Valencia, where rice-growing has long been part of local food culture. Sharing it at the table offers a direct introduction to a regional tradition rather than simply a familiar name on a menu.

Pause to view Peñíscola’s 14th-century castle rising above the old town on a rocky Mediterranean headland. Take in the fortress’s commanding position, with the shoreline extending on either side.

Built by the Knights Templar, the castle makes Peñíscola’s defensive geography easy to understand from outside its walls. The meeting of stone fortifications, compact town and sea gives this coastal view its distinctive sense of place. Castle entry is not specified.

Visit a bodega in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia for a light lunch paired with a tasting of locally made cava. Learn how secondary fermentation in the bottle and ageing on the lees shape the wine’s texture and character.

Set among vineyards associated with cava production since the 19th century, Sant Sadurní d’Anoia is a centre of Catalonia’s sparkling-wine tradition. The tasting brings the traditional method into focus through the wines in your glass.

Enjoy early access to the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona. Explore the concert hall’s sculptural Modernist detail and stained-glass skylight, and hear an organ performance in the main auditorium.

Designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the hall brings architecture and music together through coloured light, ornament and sound. Time in spaces such as the Lluís Millet Hall offers a close look at the craftsmanship of Catalan Modernisme.

Explore Barcelona with a Local Expert, travelling along Passeig de Gràcia and through the Eixample to see the city’s Modernist architecture. Visit the Sagrada Família and examine the contrast between Gaudí’s earlier work and its continuing construction.

The Eixample’s orderly grid provides a setting for expressive facades and rooflines. If basilica entry is unavailable because of a special event, the visit is replaced with the Modernist Hospital de Sant Pau, alongside an exterior view of the Sagrada Família.

Gather with your small group for a final dinner in Barcelona. Share a meal and conversation in the Catalan capital, with time to reflect on the places and people encountered across Spain and Portugal.

More than a routine evening meal, this hosted gathering brings fellow travellers back around one table. It offers a warm close to a journey spanning royal cities, Atlantic wine country and the traditions of Andalusia and Catalonia.

Dine at a family-run seafood restaurant in Lisbon on this optional group experience. Enjoy a meal centred on traditional Portuguese seafood in a setting shaped by the capital’s long connection to the Atlantic.

It is a chance to explore another side of local food culture through a dedicated dining experience rather than an independent restaurant visit. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour; the specific menu and restaurant are not specified.