Explore Madrid’s Old Quarter with a Local Expert, following streets and market squares that grew around the city’s medieval fortress. See how the compact early settlement became the centre of Habsburg Madrid.

The district’s changing street patterns and civic buildings reveal the foundations of the modern capital. Local insight gives context to the layers of expansion still visible amid its lively plazas.

Visit the port wine cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia and join a guided tasting across the Douro River from Porto. Compare styles such as ruby and tawny while learning how ageing and blending shape their flavours.

Port has been stored and aged along this riverbank since the 18th century. The cellars connect wines made in the Douro Valley with the export houses that carried them to markets abroad.

Join your group for a final dinner in Barcelona, sharing a meal and raising a glass to the places and people encountered across Spain and Portugal. It is a hosted occasion centred on conversation rather than a routine evening meal.

In the Catalan capital, the table provides a fitting setting to reflect on the journey’s contrasts, from Atlantic wine country to Andalusian traditions and Barcelona’s Modernist streets.

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 fellow travellers over dinner at a local restaurant in Madrid. The hosted meal offers a relaxed introduction to your small group and the journey through Spain and Portugal.

Spain’s capital has long brought people together around the table. Share conversation and Spanish food in a city whose neighbourhood restaurants are woven into everyday social life.

Visit Madrid’s Prado Museum with an art historian and examine works by Velázquez, Goya, Titian and Rubens. Expert commentary connects the paintings to their subjects, patrons and artistic traditions.

Founded in 1819, the Prado grew from Spain’s royal collections into one of Europe’s major art museums. Its galleries offer a particularly rich view of Spanish court painting and the wider influences that shaped it.

Walk Segovia’s historic centre with a Local Expert and view the Alcázar and Roman aqueduct. The fortress overlooks the surrounding landscape, while the aqueduct’s stacked granite arches mark an imposing entrance to the city.

These landmarks bring together Segovia’s royal, medieval and Roman past. The aqueduct carried water from the mountains for centuries; the Alcázar reflects the city’s strategic importance in Castile.

Explore Salamanca with a Local Expert, walking its central streets to Plaza Mayor and the historic university buildings. Look closely at the carved sandstone facades and intricate Plateresque details that distinguish the city.

Founded in the 13th century, Salamanca’s university helped establish the city as a European centre of learning. Its academic heritage remains tangible in the squares and buildings of the old town.

Discover Porto’s key districts with your Travel Director, taking in the riverside Ribeira and streets shaped by centuries of trade. See landmarks including São Bento station and Clérigos Tower as you get your bearings in the historic centre.

São Bento is celebrated for its blue-and-white azulejo panels depicting Portuguese history. Around it, stepped streets and merchants’ quarters speak to Porto’s long relationship with the Douro and Atlantic commerce.

Explore the Sanctuary of Fátima, Portugal’s major pilgrimage site, and view the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary and Chapel of the Apparitions. The broad esplanade conveys the scale of the gatherings held here.

The sanctuary developed following reported Marian apparitions in 1917. Its buildings and open spaces offer insight into a place of continuing religious significance for pilgrims from Portugal and around the world.

Walk within the medieval walls of Óbidos, passing whitewashed houses, small churches and narrow lanes. Sample ginja, the local sour-cherry liqueur often served in a small chocolate cup.

The fortified town has roots reaching back to Roman times and became associated with Portugal’s queens in the medieval period. Its enclosed streets preserve a distinctive sense of the country’s royal and rural heritage.

Explore Lisbon with a Local Expert, from the ordered streets of Baixa to Belém’s riverfront. View the Monument to the Discoveries and Belém Tower beside the Tagus.

Baixa’s broad layout reflects rebuilding after the devastating earthquake of 1755. In Belém, the monuments evoke Portugal’s maritime expansion, while their waterside setting shows why the river was so central to the capital’s history.

Taste pastéis de Belém in Lisbon’s Belém district: crisp pastry filled with custard, traditionally finished with a dusting of cinnamon. This tasting introduces one of the city’s best-known culinary traditions.

The Belém bakery has made its version since 1837, using a closely guarded recipe associated with the area’s monastic past. The contrast of flaky layers and warm, creamy filling explains its enduring appeal.

Visit Lisbon’s National Coach Museum to examine royal carriages dating from the 16th to the 19th centuries. See how elaborate decoration and changing designs suited state ceremonies and diplomatic occasions.

These vehicles were more than transport: they displayed status and craftsmanship in public. Their carved details, painted surfaces and interiors illuminate the protocols of European court life across 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 gardens.

The Giralda began as a minaret before becoming the cathedral’s bell tower, capturing Seville’s layered history. María Luisa Park took much of its present form for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, adding another chapter to the city’s architectural story.

Meet students at Seville’s Cristina Heeren Foundation, learn basic flamenco rhythms and movements, and watch young artists perform. An instructor introduces the disciplines of dance, singing and guitar taught at the school.

Flamenco is a living Andalusian tradition sustained through study and performance. This visit supports the foundation’s work to preserve the art form and train emerging performers, offering a closer look at the dedication behind the stagecraft.

Explore Gibraltar with a Local Expert, heading towards the Rock and visiting St. Michael’s Cave. See the limestone chamber’s formations and watch for the protected Barbary macaques that live on the Rock.

Gibraltar’s streets and defences reflect its strategic position at the meeting of the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The visit brings its British and Mediterranean influences together with a landscape shaped over thousands of years.

Walk through Alfarnatejo with your Travel Director, see an established olive grove and visit a rural mill to taste local oils with fresh bread. Hear how harvest timing and growing conditions affect flavour.

Share a home-cooked lunch with a local family, featuring seasonal Andalusian food and conversation about village life. Together, the grove, mill and family table offer a grounded introduction to the region’s agricultural traditions.

Explore Granada with a Local Expert and take a guided visit to the Alhambra. Walk among courtyards, carved plasterwork and gardens associated with the Nasrid rulers, while learning how the palace complex relates to the city below.

Granada’s older Moorish lanes and later streets reveal successive chapters of its history. At the Alhambra, architecture, water and planting express the artistic refinement of the last Muslim dynasty to rule in Iberia.

See Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, a sculptural cultural complex in the former Turia riverbed, and get your bearings around the Old City’s surviving medieval gateways.

The contrast reveals two sides of Valencia: contemporary architecture rising from a river diversion project, and a historic street pattern shaped by centuries of settlement. Your Travel Director points out features that help make sense of the city’s changing form.

Sit down to a paella dinner in Valencia, the region where the rice dish originated. Taste how rice absorbs its seasoned stock and how the chosen ingredients give the finished dish its character.

Paella grew from local cooking traditions associated with Valencia’s rice-growing landscape. Sharing it at a local restaurant offers a direct connection to the city’s food heritage, rather than simply a familiar dish served away from its roots.

Pause to view Peñíscola’s 14th-century castle above the old town, perched on a rocky limestone headland between stretches of Mediterranean shoreline. Its walls make a striking focal point for taking in the coastal setting.

Built by the Knights Templar, the fortress later became associated with Pope Benedict XIII. Seen from below, the castle shows how its commanding position served both defence and visibility along the coast.

Visit a local bodega in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia for a light lunch and cava tasting. Compare sparkling wines while learning how fermentation in the bottle and ageing on the lees influence their texture and flavour.

This vineyard area has been central to cava production since the 19th century. The tasting connects the finished wines to the traditional method and the long-established wine culture of Catalonia.

Enjoy early access to Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana, exploring its richly decorated spaces before hearing an organ performance in the main auditorium. Look up at the stained-glass skylight and take in the sculptural detail.

Designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, the concert hall is a landmark of Catalan Modernisme. Music brings the building’s purpose into focus, letting you experience the auditorium as a performance space as well as an architectural work.

Discover Barcelona with a Local Expert, travelling along Passeig de Gràcia and through the Eixample’s distinctive grid before visiting Gaudí’s Sagrada Família. Examine its contrasting stonework and the continuing construction of the basilica.

The route connects the city’s Modernista architecture with its changing skyline. If basilica entry is unavailable because of a special event or ticket restrictions, the visit substitutes the Modernist Hospital de Sant Pau and includes an exterior view of the Sagrada Família from its surrounding gardens.

Dine at a family-run seafood restaurant in Lisbon on an optional hosted evening. The meal offers a chance to explore traditional Portuguese seafood cooking in a setting shaped by the capital’s close relationship with the Atlantic.

Seafood has a longstanding place in Portuguese food culture, from everyday neighbourhood restaurants to celebratory meals. This Optional Experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.