Your itinerary
Day 1
Day 1: Begin Your Journey Over Dinner in Madrid
On your first evening in Madrid, you follow broad avenues lined with ornate façades and wrought-iron balconies as street lamps cast a soft golden glow across carved stonework. On your way to dinner, you may catch the scent of garlic and paprika from cafes and restaurant kitchens. You’ll join your Travel Director and fellow travellers at a local restaurant, sharing plates of typical madrileño food as you meet the people you’ll travel with over the next 15 days.
Meals: Dinner
Day 2
Day 2: Explore Madrid’s Old Quarter and Prado
With your Local Specialist, you’ll drive through Madrid’s narrow, winding lanes beneath granite arches and into arcaded squares, passing high convent walls, red brick and grey slate. As the route curls through the Old Quarter, you hear how Mayrit began as a ninth-century fortress and later became the seat of the Spanish court. Inside the Prado Museum, an art historian leads you through Velázquez’s silvered light and Goya’s dark intensity. Titian glows with luminous colour, while Rubens fills the canvas with muscular drama. You move nearer to the canvases, tracing brushstrokes that become satin, skin, smoke and sky.
Meals: Breakfast
Day 3
Day 3: Medieval Spain: Segovia to Salamanca
In Segovia, your Local Specialist leads you through the medieval streets, where patterned sgraffito curls across façades and Romanesque towers punctuate the rooftops. At the Alcázar, you pause beneath conical turrets poised above two river valleys, where wooded slopes descend towards ribbons of water below. Then you look along the aqueduct’s two-tiered sweep, its unmortared blocks stacked with astonishing precision. Heading west, you watch Ávila’s battlements and round towers encircle the old city like a pale stone crown. In Salamanca, voices echo beneath Plaza Mayor’s Baroque colonnades as you study the carved medallions overhead. Beyond the square, you admire cathedral pinnacles and the intricate stonework of the 16th-century university buildings, washed in sandstone shades of honey and rose.
Meals: Breakfast
Day 4
Day 4: Northern Portugal: Porto and the Douro
Crossing into Portugal, you’ll arrive in Porto, where tiled buildings line the steep banks of the Douro. In Vila Nova de Gaia, you enter the wine stores and pass cask after cask, the faint scent of oak deepening along the corridors. You lift each glass, breathe in its aroma and taste tawny and vintage Ports side by side, comparing their colour, depth and finish. Returning to Porto, you follow the riverfront past multicoloured houses and churches covered in blue-and-white azulejos. Ahead, the double-decked iron span of Luiz I Bridge curves across the Douro, linking Porto with Gaia.
Meals: Breakfast,Dinner
Day 5
Day 5: Journey Through Fátima, Óbidos and Lisbon
At Fátima, you’ll enter the great prayer area, where candle flames flicker beside the Chapel of Apparitions and pilgrims pause as they run rosaries through their fingers. Within Óbidos’s walls, whitewashed houses trimmed in blue and yellow crowd winding passageways, with flowers tumbling from windowsills. You sip locally made ginjinha, letting the sweet-tart warmth of sour cherry rest on your tongue before continuing to Lisbon. This evening, you may choose an Optional Experience at a family-run restaurant, sharing traditional Portuguese seafood as the city settles into night.
Meals: Breakfast
Day 6
Day 6: Lisbon Highlights: Baixa, Belém and Beyond
Travelling through Lisbon’s spacious Lower Town, you’ll pass hand-set black-and-white calçada mosaics on the way to Pombal Square with your Local Specialist. You’ll taste Pastéis de Belém, biting through its crisp pastry into silky custard, made to a secret recipe guarded since 1837. Nearby, the Monument to the Discoveries rises like a caravel setting out to sea, while Belém Tower’s limestone battlements stand at the river’s edge. Inside the National Coach Museum, you admire royal gala vehicles from the 16th to the 19th centuries, rich with gilded carvings, painted panels and deep red velvet. Your afternoon is free, or you may choose an Optional Experience along the Portuguese Riviera to Cascais and Estoril, where surfers ride the Atlantic waves and grand hotels frequented by royalty.
Meals: Breakfast
Day 7
Day 7: Journey From the Algarve to Seville
Crossing into the Algarve, you pause for lunch in a coastal town, where you may notice intricately pierced chimneys rising from terracotta roofs. Over lunch, you sit among whitewashed walls, tiled doorways and carved wooden shutters. Beyond the Spanish border, you watch cork-oak meadows unfurl into broad plains beneath an open sky. By late afternoon, you arrive in Seville beside the Guadalquivir, with the evening yours to enjoy.
Meals: Breakfast
Day 8
Day 8: Gothic Grandeur and Flamenco: Seville in Full
Enjoy a relaxed start, or choose between two Optional Experiences: admire the architectural elegance of Pilatos Palace, or explore the Alcázar of Seville and the graceful pavilions of nearby Plaza América. Later, your Local Specialist leads you through Santa Cruz’s shaded alleys and orange-tree plazas. Inside Seville Cathedral, the world’s largest Gothic cathedral, you lift your gaze through ranks of stone columns to ribbed vaults and jewel-coloured glass, then stand before the tomb of Christopher Columbus. In the evening, your MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience is a private flamenco lesson, where guitar notes fill the studio, handclaps mark the beat and you learn the sweeps and turns of the traditional Spanish dance. Then watch flamenco take over the room in a passionate live performance.
Meals: Breakfast
Day 9
Day 9: Explore Gibraltar and the Costa del Sol
At Gibraltar, a British Overseas Territory at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, you explore the limestone Rock with your Local Specialist. Inside St Michael’s Cave, the cavern answers each sound with a low echo as stalactites and stalagmites glow around you. Along the Costa del Sol, the Mediterranean slips in and out of sight between palms, marinas and pale resort hotels as you travel through coastal enclaves long associated with film stars and luxury holidays.
Meals: Breakfast
Day 10
Day 10: Enjoy a Leisurely Costa del Sol Day
With the Costa del Sol yours for the day, you can swim in the glistening blue-green Mediterranean, follow the promenade or choose a table near the shore, where the scent of grilled fish, lemon and olive oil drifts from local restaurants. You might also head to Málaga, Picasso’s birthplace, where family paintings and 19th-century furnishings fill the rooms of his childhood home.
Meals: Breakfast,Dinner
Day 11
Day 11: Andalucía’s Heart: Alfarnatejo and Granada
Among the mountains of Alfarnatejo, you’ll arrive in a village of fewer than 500 people, where pale houses surround the 18th-century Iglesia del Santo Cristo de Cabrilla. At the region’s oldest olive grove, you visit a rural mill and taste a selection of oils soaked into thick, locally made farmhouse bread. In small groups, you enter a local family’s home for lunch, passing dishes of fresh regional produce around the table and sharing the flavours of Andalucía with your hosts. In Granada, your Local Specialist leads you through the Alhambra, a 13th-century Moorish citadel of intimate courtyards, flowing fountains and stone carved into patterns as delicate as lace.
Meals: Breakfast,Lunch
Day 12
Day 12: Valencia Highlights: Old City and Paella
Entering Valencia, you’ll pass the Old City’s ancient gates before the white curves of the City of Arts and Sciences shimmer across long pools of water. In your free time, you might visit the Cathedral and El Miguelete, listening to its great bell mark the hour above the rooftops, or sit with a drink as cafe conversation fills the square. At a family-run restaurant in the Old City, you meet the chef and follow the cooking demonstration as a rich, savoury aroma rises from the wide paella pan. At dinner, you taste the finished dish, warm from the pan.
Meals: Breakfast,Dinner
Day 13
Day 13: Castle, Cellars and Coast: Barcelona Bound
North along the coast, you reach Peñíscola, where a Templar castle crowns a rocky headland and the Mediterranean spreads beneath its pale walls. You may recognise its ramparts from the film El Cid. At Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, you descend into the cava bodegas, where cool vaulted cellars stretch beneath the town and bottles rest in long, shadowed rows. Over a light lunch, you lift a glass and taste cava, its fine bubbles bright on your tongue as you learn how the wine gains its sparkle. Then the journey continues along the Costa Dorada to Barcelona.
Meals: Breakfast,Lunch
Day 14
Day 14: Explore Barcelona and Gaudí’s Sagrada Família
With your Local Specialist, you’ll travel along Passeig de Gràcia, where sculptural street lamps rise beside Modernist buildings whose wrought-iron balconies twist into intricate patterns above coloured tiles and carved stone. Through the Eixample district, you reach Gaudí’s Sagrada Família*. Inside, you wander between giant columns branching like trees, then lift your gaze to soaring vaults as stained-glass colour spills across the central nave. At a local restaurant, join your fellow travellers for dinner, raising a glass to new friendships and two weeks across the Iberian Peninsula. *As construction of the Sagrada Família moves closer to completion, access may occasionally be restricted due to special masses, pilgrim visits or official ceremonies. If tickets are unavailable during your tour, you’ll visit the Hospital de Sant Pau, a remarkable example of Catalan Art Nouveau designed by Domènech i Montaner. You’ll then join your Local Specialist to admire the extraordinary exterior of Gaudí’s basilica.
Meals: Breakfast,Dinner
Day 15
Day 15: Say Farewell to Spain and Portugal
After 15 days across Spain and Portugal, you transfer to the airport with new friendships, memories of grand cities, shared tables and extraordinary art.
Meals: Breakfast
What’s included
What’s not included
Additional information
Dining Summary
- 5 Dinner (D)
- 14 Breakfast (B)
- 2 Lunch (L)
How You'll Travel
- Business class coach with extended leg room
- Top-rated dining, from farm-to-table to local restaurants
- 4 & 5-star stays
Authentic Dining
- Madrid: Join your Travel Director at 18:00 for dinner in a local restaurant and get to know your fellow travellers over a beautiful evening of delicious food and wine.
- Vila Nova de Gaia: Visit the wine cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, the centre of port ageing and storage since the 18th century. You’ll learn how barrel conditions, blending practices and long-standing shipper traditions define styles such as Ruby, Tawny and Vintage. Examine the link between Douro Valley production and the export houses established along this southern bank of the Douro River.
- Lisbon: In Belém, try pastéis de Belém: crisp layers of pastry encasing custard complete with a dusting of cinnamon. See how the pastries follow a closely guarded recipe, and are still prepared in the same bakery that has produced them since 1837.
- Torremolinos: Visit a rural mill outside Torremolinos to taste olive oils pressed from olives grown on trees that have stood in this region for generations. Try a few varieties with freshly baked bread and hear how harvest timing, soil and tree age influence the flavour.
- Alfarnatejo: Share a home-cooked lunch with a local family in Alfarnatejo. Expect simple Andalusian dishes, seasonal ingredients and an easy conversation around the table. It’s a chance to see how meals are prepared and shared in this part of rural Spain, and to hear stories about the town from the people who live there.
- Valencia: Spend time with a chef in a family-run kitchen to see how Valencian paella is built from its base — the heat of the pan, the saffron stock, the type of rice and the order ingredients go in. Afterwards, sit down to eat the finished paella, tasting the layered flavour and socarrat crust you’ve just watched being made.
- Barcelona: In Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, you’ll visit a local bodega set among the vineyards that have supplied cava houses since the 19th century. A light lunch is paired with a tasting of cavas made using the traditional method, showing how bottle fermentation and ageing on the lees influence the wine’s structure and character.
- Barcelona: Your final evening brings the group together around the table in Barcelona. It’s a chance to share dinner in the Catalan capital, reminisce over the days you’ve travelled and mark the end of your journey across Spain and Portugal with one last meal together.
Premium Experience
- 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 Specialist 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.
Salamanca Walking Tour & University Quarter
Join a Local Specialist to explore Salamanca’s golden heart: the luminous Plaza Mayor, arcaded streets and sandstone churches glowing in honeyed light. In the learned core, enter the orbit of the University of Salamanca, one of Europe’s oldest.
Study Plateresque detail carved into facades and portals, then step into quiet courtyards where monastic life once unfolded. Hear how scholarship and trade combined to fashion Salamanca’s architectural identity and enduring civic pride.
Porto Riverside Walk & Gaia Port Cellars Tasting
Explore the Ribeira riverfront, where tall facades tilt toward the Douro and boats glide under the iron span of the Dom Luís I Bridge. Blue-and-white azulejos, cafe terraces and church towers sketch the city’s layered hillside.
Cross to the Vila Nova de Gaia wine cellars for a guided port tasting. Among oak casks and aging pipes, learn how Douro Valley grapes, blending traditions and cellar time shape ruby, tawny and vintage styles into Portugal’s most storied fortified wine.
Fátima Sanctuary Complex Visit
Visit the Sanctuary of Fátima, a modern pilgrimage center created after the reported apparitions of 1917. Walk the vast esplanade and pause at the Chapel of the Apparitions, where flickering candles and whispered prayers set a contemplative mood.
View the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary and its serene colonnades framing the broad esplanade. Your Local Specialist relates how devotion, architecture and open-air ritual intersect at one of Europe’s most significant Catholic sites.
Óbidos Village Walk & Ginja Tasting
Walk within Óbidos’ medieval walls, following cobbled lanes lined with whitewashed lanes and painted trims. Small churches and townhouses hint at layers of patronage and defense in this hilltop stronghold.
Pause to sample ginja, the local sour-cherry liqueur traditionally served in petite cups. Your guide connects Óbidos’ Roman origins, royal wedding dowry status and village customs that still color daily life behind the battlements.
Lisbon City Highlights: Baixa & Belém Monuments
Explore Lisbon’s Baixa district, rebuilt after 1755 with a rational Pombaline grid and elegant squares paved in black-and-white calcada mosaics. Broad boulevards and river light set a distinctly Atlantic tone.
Continue to Belém to view the Monument to the Discoveries and riverside Belém Tower, icons of Portugal’s maritime era. Hear how navigators, patrons and stone carvers translated ocean ambition into limestone, sculpture and national memory along the Tagus.
Lisbon National Coach Museum
Step inside the National Coach Museum to examine royal state carriages from the 16th to 19th centuries. Gilded woodwork, painted panels and velvet interiors reveal the artistry that framed dynastic ceremony.
Learn how coach design evolved with changing courts and diplomacy, and admire examples rich in gilded baroque decoration. Your visit traces technological shifts and the pageantry of movement before the age of the motorcar.
Pastéis de Belém Tasting
Join a sweet ritual of Lisbon and taste pastéis de Belém warm from the bakery. Bite into crisp pastry and silky custard dusted with cinnamon as the aroma of sugar and butter fills the tiled room.
Hear how monks perfected a secret recipe since 1837, and how the neighborhood of Belém turned a monastic confection into a national icon. It’s a small, delicious window into Portuguese tradition.
Seville’s Santa Cruz Quarter & Cathedral
Follow a Local Specialist into the Santa Cruz quarter, where shaded alleys, grilled balconies and orange-scented plazas preserve the layout of Seville’s medieval Jewish neighborhood.
Enter the vast Seville Cathedral, recognized as the world’s largest Gothic church, to view the Giralda—a former minaret—and the tomb of Christopher Columbus. Stone vaults, stained glass and side chapels reveal faith layered over centuries of Andalusian history.
MAKE TRAVEL MATTER: Flamenco Lesson & Performance, Seville
Step into a studio for a private flamenco lesson at the Cristina Heeren Foundation, a school dedicated to preserving the art through training in guitar, cante and dance. Learn the rhythm of palmas and the sweep of basic steps.
Afterward, watch a live performance and discuss how your visit supports SDG 4: Quality Education. This encounter highlights living culture and the pathways that carry flamenco to new generations.
Gibraltar Rock Tour, St. Michael’s Cave & Barbary Apes
Ascend the iconic Rock of Gibraltar with a Local Specialist to survey the meeting of the Atlantic and Mediterranean and the distant Spanish sierras. The promontory’s strategic story stretches from ancient myth to modern naval routes.
Enter the otherworldly St. Michael’s Cave, where stalactites glow under soft light, and step outside to observe the famous Barbary Apes. Natural spectacle, wildlife and geopolitics combine on this storied limestone ridge.
Alfarnatejo Village, Olive Mill & Home-Hosted Lunch
Arrive in an Andalusian mountain village ringed by olive groves and pale peaks. Whitewashed houses and a quiet church square set the scene for an intimate look at rural life.
At a family-run press, visit a rural olive mill and taste premium olive oils with farmhouse bread as you learn how varietals and harvest timing shape flavor. Then share a home-cooked lunch with local hosts—simple seasonal dishes, easy conversation and genuine hospitality.
Alhambra Palace Guided Visit, Granada
Walk through the Alhambra Palace, a 13th-century Moorish citadel where Nasrid palaces reveal an intimate world of carved stucco, cedar lattice and calligraphy.
Move between fountain-fed courtyards and shaded porticos as your Local Specialist interprets geometry, water and light. The lace-like plasterwork and tranquil gardens show how aesthetics and engineering intertwined to shape Granada’s hilltop masterpiece.
Valencia Old City Orientation & Paella Demonstration Dinner
Get your bearings in Valencia’s Old City, where medieval gates, market halls and elegant plazas frame daily life near the cathedral quarter. The city’s balance of tradition and innovation anchors Spain’s eastern seaboard.
At a family-run kitchen, join a paella cooking demonstration as saffron stock simmers and rice settles into a thin layer. Sit down to taste the socarrat crust and discuss how ingredients and fire define Valencia’s emblematic dish.
Peñíscola Castle Headland Viewpoint
Pause on the coast to view Peñíscola Castle, a Templar stronghold set on a limestone headland that divides long beaches and fishing coves.
Learn how knights fortified this promontory and why filmmakers later favored its Templar fortress silhouette. The elevated setting offers sweeping coastal panoramas and a striking sense of place between sea and stone.
Sant Sadurní d’Anoia Cava Cellars & Tasting
Descend into cool, vaulted cava bodegas beneath a town surrounded by vineyard rows. Guides explain the traditional method—second fermentation in bottle and aging on the lees—that gives Catalonia’s signature sparkling wine its fine bead.
Enjoy a light lunch paired with a tasting flight as you compare grape blends and maturation. It’s an expressive snapshot of vineyard country where 19th-century innovation still shapes today’s bubbles.
Barcelona City Highlights & Sagrada Família Interior
Travel the elegant Passeig de Gràcia to admire Modernista facades, sculpted balconies and tilework that ushered Barcelona into the 20th century with audacity and craft.
Step inside Sagrada Família to gaze up at its soaring nave washed in stained-glass light. Your Local Specialist explains Gaudí’s forest-like columns and evolving construction. If interior access is restricted, you’ll visit Hospital de Sant Pau and view Sagrada Família’s extraordinary exterior in detail.
Barcelona Farewell Dinner
Gather one final time to share a farewell dinner in the Catalan capital. Toast new friendships and raise a glass in Barcelona as stories from the road circle the table.
Savor seasonal Catalan flavors that reflect the market tradition—sea, garden and mountains on the plate. It’s a fitting close to two weeks of Iberian art, music, history and generous hospitality.
Optional: Cascais & Estoril Coastal Drive
Follow the shoreline of the Cascais and Estoril coast, a stretch long favored by royalty and sun-seekers for its villas, marinas and golden bays along the Portuguese Riviera.
Stroll seaside promenades, browse boutiques, or simply watch breakers roll in on the Atlantic surf coast. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour, subject to availability and minimum numbers.
Optional: Seville’s Casa de Pilatos
Discover Casa de Pilatos, a noble mansion where Mudéjar and Renaissance courtyards flow into one another through arches, fountains and marble galleries.
Admire vivid azulejo tiles, carved stucco and sculpted patios that reveal the tastes of Andalusian elites across centuries. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.
Optional: Seville Alcázar & Plaza de América
Enter the Royal Alcázar of Seville to explore Mudéjar palaces, tile-clad halls and tranquil gardens that blend Islamic artistry with Christian courtly life.
Continue to the Plaza de América in María Luisa Park, an ensemble from the 1929 Exposition framed by palms, fountains and pavilions. This experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.
Operated By
Insight Vacations
Welcome Dinner in Madrid
Begin your journey over a convivial table in the Spanish capital and meet your Travel Director alongside fellow guests. In a lively neighborhood restaurant, sample typical madrileño dishes and local wines as the city’s evening rhythm hums outside.
Hear insider tips for the days ahead and raise a glass to Spain and Portugal’s art, architecture and regional kitchens. This warm introduction sets the tone for relaxed conversation, shared discovery and the easy camaraderie of small-group travel in great company.
Madrid Old Quarter Walk & Prado Museum with Art Historian
Explore arcaded squares and granite archways on a guided walk through Madrid’s Old Quarter, tracing the city’s evolution from Mayrit to Habsburg Madrid. Narrow lanes open onto historic plazas where convent walls and market streets reveal layers of royal and civic life.
Continue inside the Prado Museum with an art historian. Stand before Velázquez and Goya, and learn how Spain’s royal collections shaped this world-class gallery. Brushstrokes resolve into satin, skin and sky as masterpieces are placed in their cultural and political context.
Segovia Walk: Alcázar & Roman Aqueduct
Walk Segovia’s medieval lanes where sgraffito facades and Romanesque towers line the route. Pause to examine the Roman aqueduct, its two-tiered arches of unmortared granite carrying mountain water into the city for nearly two millennia.
Climb to the Alcázar of Segovia, a clifftop fortress whose turrets overlook the meeting of two river valleys. Your Local Specialist draws the link between Roman engineering, medieval power and royal symbolism that defines Segovia’s skyline.
