Share a farewell dinner in Lisbon with your Travel Director and fellow travellers. Raise a glass over regional cooking and conversation at a local restaurant, marking the experiences shared across Portugal.

This hosted dinner centres on the simple pleasure of gathering around the table, an important part of Portuguese social life. It provides a fitting occasion to revisit favourite places and flavours with the people who explored them alongside you.

• 3 Dinner (D)
• 10 Breakfast (B)
• 2 Lunch (L)

• Monsaraz: Join a local boat captain for a tranquil cruise on Lake Alqueva. Relax and enjoy calming waters, picturesque views and tales of river life.

• “I love taking guests to Monsaraz because It’s one of the many villages lost in time. It’s not easy for guests to find on their own and they feel like they’re visiting a secret paradise.”

Savour a farm-to-table lunch in the Douro Valley featuring locally sourced ingredients, accompanied by a tasting of Port wine. Enjoy regional dishes while learning how grapes grown on the valley’s steep, terraced hillsides become its best-known wine.

The Douro’s vineyard landscape reflects generations of cultivation beside the river. Pairing local food with Port makes this more than a meal: it is an introduction to the land, agricultural traditions and flavours of one of Portugal’s defining wine regions.

Meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers over a welcome dinner at a local restaurant in Lisbon. Share Portuguese food and wine in a relaxed setting, with time to get to know the people travelling with you.

Lisbon’s restaurants draw on ingredients from across Portugal, from Atlantic seafood to regional cheeses and olive oil. This hosted meal offers an introduction to the country’s cooking and a chance to begin the journey in good company.

Insight Vacations

• 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

Explore Lisbon with a Local Expert, travelling through Baixa’s broad avenues and squares to the riverside Belém Quarter. View Belém Tower and the Monument to the Discoveries, and visit the richly carved cloisters of Jerónimos Monastery.

Baixa’s orderly streets took shape after the 1755 earthquake, while the monastery’s Manueline stonework reflects Portugal’s maritime wealth. Taste a pastel de Belém from the neighbourhood patisserie known for its long-held custard-tart recipe.

Stroll through Lagos with your Travel Director and get to know this Algarve town near the long sweep of Meia Praia. Its streets and waterfront retain the character of a working coastal community, with fishing boats and cafés close to the shore.

Lagos was also an important port during Portugal’s maritime expansion. The walk offers a grounded introduction to the town’s seafaring past and the everyday rhythms of the southern coast, rather than a view of the Algarve from the beach alone.

Explore Évora with a Local Expert inside its UNESCO-listed historic centre. See the Roman Temple, visit the cathedral to admire its Romanesque and Gothic features, and enter the striking Chapel of Bones.

Set within a 16th-century church, the chapel’s walls are lined with human bones and skulls as a reflection on mortality. Together with Évora’s ancient streets and monuments, these visits reveal how Roman, medieval and religious histories remain visible across this Alentejo city.

Wander through whitewashed Monsaraz, a fortified Alentejo village set high above olive groves, cork oaks and vineyards. Explore the castle ruins and look out across the surrounding plains to the blue waters of Lake Alqueva.

Monsaraz’s stone lanes and defensive walls speak to centuries of life near the Spanish border. Its elevated setting makes the contrast especially vivid between the region’s dry, open countryside and one of Europe’s largest artificial lakes.

Cruise the calm waters of Lake Alqueva with a local boat captain, taking in views of the Alentejo countryside and the hilltop village of Monsaraz. Listen to stories of life on the water as the shoreline unfolds around you.

Created by a dam on the Guadiana River, the lake has transformed the landscape while becoming part of the region’s daily life. The unhurried cruise offers a close-up perspective on its scale and quiet, open scenery.

Enjoy an Alentejo lunch at Sem Fim, a restaurant near Monsaraz housed in a former olive mill. Share a selection of local dishes in a lively setting that gives a distinctive new use to an old agricultural space.

The Alentejo is known for cooking rooted in its rural landscape, where olive oil, bread and seasonal produce have long been staples. This included meal is a chance to taste that regional tradition while taking in the character of the converted mill.

Taste Alentejo wines at the family-run Casa Relvas estate, including wines made with Portuguese grape varieties such as Touriga Nacional. Hear how the family cultivates its vineyards in a region shaped by dry summers and limited water.

The visit connects each pour to the estate’s work on water conservation, native-species reforestation and local education. It offers insight into both the flavours of the Alentejo and the practical choices involved in producing wine responsibly.

Visit the Sanctuary of Fátima, one of Portugal’s foremost pilgrimage destinations. See its vast gathering square and the places of worship associated with the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary to three young shepherds in 1917.

The sanctuary includes the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary and the Chapel of the Apparitions. Whether approached as a place of faith or cultural history, its scale and continuing importance to pilgrims make it a significant Portuguese landmark.

Explore Tomar’s Convent of Christ with a Local Expert as one of two included sightseeing choices. Visit the former Templar stronghold to see its octagonal Charola, defensive structures and richly ornamented Manueline Window.

Founded in the 12th century and later expanded by the Order of Christ, this UNESCO World Heritage Site traces a remarkable passage from medieval military order to Portugal’s maritime age. Your expert brings the architecture and the lives of its warrior monks into focus.

Walk through Tomar with a Local Expert as an alternative included sightseeing choice. Explore the town centre and visit its 15th-century synagogue, one of the best-preserved medieval examples in Portugal.

The former place of worship now holds a small collection relating to Tomar’s Jewish community. This guided visit offers a different perspective on the town’s history, looking beyond its Templar associations to the people and traditions that also shaped its streets.

Explore Coimbra with a Local Expert, following the steep lanes of Portugal’s former capital towards its historic university. Visit the UNESCO-listed University of Coimbra and step into its ornate baroque library.

Founded in the 13th century, the university has shaped the city’s identity for generations. In the library, carved shelves and painted ceilings frame collections of rare books, offering a vivid sense of Coimbra’s long academic and literary life.

Walk the cobbled streets of Guimarães, taking in the small squares, stone-fronted buildings and castle setting of its medieval centre. The town’s compact lanes make its long history especially tangible at street level.

Often called the birthplace of Portugal, Guimarães is closely linked to the kingdom’s early formation. Its preserved centre still contains arcades, courtyards and buildings in everyday use, offering a sense of continuity rather than a historic quarter held apart from modern life.

Discover Porto with a Local Expert, travelling past historic avenues and tiled facades. Visit São Bento Railway Station to see its painted azulejo panels, and walk across the Dom Luís I Bridge for views along the Douro River.

São Bento’s tiles depict scenes from Portugal’s past, while the iron bridge is one of Porto’s defining works of 19th-century engineering. Together, these landmarks reveal the city’s craftsmanship, history and close relationship with the river.

Walk inside the medieval walls of Óbidos, following cobbled lanes between whitewashed houses and small churches. Sample ginja, the local sour-cherry liqueur traditionally served in a small cup.

The fortified town retains a street pattern shaped over centuries, from its earlier settlement to its association with Portugal’s queens as a royal wedding gift. Its enclosed lanes and painted facades offer a close view of a historic town that remains lived in.

Choose an evening dinner experience in Lisbon for another opportunity to explore Portuguese culture through its food. This optional experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

The itinerary does not specify the venue, menu or whether entertainment is included, so the experience is best understood as an organised cultural dinner rather than a particular performance. Your Travel Director can provide the available details and price during the tour.

Explore Porto’s Ribeira district, cruise the Douro aboard a traditional rabelo boat, and enjoy Portuguese flavours at a riverside restaurant. This optional experience is at additional cost and bookable on tour.

Rabelo boats once carried Port wine barrels from the Douro Valley towards Porto’s wine lodges. Seeing the city from the water adds a different perspective on Ribeira’s colourful waterfront houses, river crossings and enduring connection to the wine trade.