• 4 Dinner (D)
• 8 Breakfast (B)

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

• 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.
• 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.

• Madrid: Sit down to dinner with your Travel Director and fellow travellers at a local restaurant.

Insight Vacations

Get your bearings in Valencia with your Travel Director’s orientation of the Old City. See its medieval gateways and streets shaped by successive periods of growth, and take in the contrasting modern forms of the City of Arts and Sciences.

Valencia’s historic centre preserves traces of its walled past, while the contemporary complex occupies the former Turia riverbed. Seeing both areas reveals the city’s architectural range, from narrow old-quarter streets to sweeping white structures. Entry to the complex is not specified.

Walk with your Travel Director by Córdoba’s Roman bridge over the Guadalquivir, past old gateway towers and into the historic centre. Whitewashed houses, small squares and tucked-away patios give the district its intimate scale.

First built in the 1st century BCE and altered over later centuries, the bridge has long connected the city across the river. This short orientation places Córdoba’s principal sights within the street pattern of its older quarters.

Visit Madrid’s Prado Museum with an art historian to examine works by Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Titian and Rubens. Expert commentary places the paintings in their historical setting and draws out their connections to royal patronage.

Founded in 1819, the Prado became a principal home for Spain’s royal art collections and major European works. Its galleries offer a close look at how artists portrayed power, faith and everyday life across centuries.

Share a farewell dinner at a local Madrid restaurant with your Travel Director and fellow small-group travellers. The hosted meal offers time to talk over the places, art and traditions encountered across Spain.

Madrid’s restaurant tables are natural gathering places, and this dinner provides a relaxed setting for a final evening together. Rather than a sightseeing visit, its focus is the company and conversation that bring a small-group journey to a close.

Taste a seasonal Catalan dinner at La Pau, a Barcelona restaurant where food and social purpose share the table. Young people in training prepare and serve the meal, gaining practical experience in the kitchen and dining room.

The restaurant supports teenagers and young adults moving towards independent living through paid work, mentoring and a structured place to learn. Your visit offers a direct connection to a local initiative working to reduce inequality.

Enjoy early access to the Palau de la Música Catalana, Barcelona’s richly decorated Modernista concert hall. See the Lluís Millet Hall and settle into the main auditorium beneath its stained-glass skylight for a short organ performance.

Designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner and opened in 1908, the hall brings sculpture, mosaic and coloured glass together around live music. Hearing the organ in the auditorium adds an acoustic dimension to its celebrated architecture.

Explore Barcelona with a Local Specialist, following Passeig de Gràcia into the Eixample’s distinctive grid of broad streets. Look for the sculptural facades and inventive details that made this avenue a showcase for Catalan Modernisme.

Your specialist connects the city’s changing skyline with its late-19th-century expansion, when architects including Antoni Gaudí reimagined the urban streetscape. The walk gives you a street-level understanding of how Barcelona’s celebrated buildings fit into a living neighbourhood.

Step inside Gaudí’s Sagrada Família to see its lofty nave, tree-like columns and stained glass casting shifting colour across the interior. Begun in 1882, the basilica remains one of Barcelona’s most distinctive architectural projects.

Gaudí drew on natural forms to shape a space unlike a conventional church. Basilica entry is subject to religious services and official events; if access is restricted, the included visit is instead to Domènech i Montaner’s Hospital de Sant Pau, with a view of the Sagrada Família exterior from its surrounding gardens.

See Peñíscola’s 14th-century castle rising above its old town on a limestone headland beside the Mediterranean. The fortress and its compact cluster of white buildings create a striking silhouette against the coast.

Built by the Knights Templar, the castle later served as the residence of Pope Benedict XIII, known as Papa Luna. Its dramatic setting also appeared in the film El Cid. This is a sightseeing view of the castle; entry is not specified.

Explore Granada’s Alhambra with a Local Specialist, walking through the Nasrid palace complex to see tiled halls, intricate decoration, courtyards and water channels. Continue into the Generalife gardens, with their terraces, pools and views towards the city.

The Alhambra was a centre of power for Granada’s Nasrid rulers, while the Generalife served as a summer retreat. Together, their architecture and gardens show how craftsmanship, flowing water and the hilltop landscape shaped life at the court.

Explore Seville with a Local Specialist, viewing the Giralda bell tower and Seville Cathedral’s exterior and walking through the former Jewish quarter. See María Luisa Park’s tiled fountains, pavilions and formal gardens.

The Giralda began as a minaret before becoming a cathedral bell tower, a visible reminder of the city’s layered history. María Luisa Park was developed for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition, adding another chapter to Seville’s varied architectural character.

Meet students at Seville’s Cristina Heeren Foundation, learn a few basic flamenco steps and rhythms, and watch young artists perform. An instructor introduces the movements taught at this school dedicated to flamenco guitar, singing and dance.

Flamenco is a living Andalusian tradition built on the exchange between performers. Seeing students at work offers insight into the discipline behind its expressive sound and movement. The foundation’s teaching and preservation work is supported by a TreadRight Foundation grant.

Visit the Mezquita-Cathedral with a local historian and walk among its forest of columns and striped arches. Examine the central choir and chapels as your historian explains how the building changed from a mosque into a cathedral.

The complex preserves architectural layers from Córdoba’s Islamic and Christian past within a single monument. Its repeating arches create a powerful sense of scale, while the later additions make the city’s changing religious history visible in stone.

Explore Madrid with a Local Specialist, taking in its main avenues, Plaza de España and views towards the Royal Palace. Travel through the Old Quarter as your specialist points out the streets, squares and civic buildings at the heart of the capital.

Learn how a small medieval settlement developed into Habsburg Madrid and expanded into the city seen today. The tour offers a useful overview of the capital’s historic centre without implying entry to the Royal Palace.

Explore Granada’s Albaicín quarter with a Local Specialist, tracing narrow lanes and the older street layout of this historic hillside district. The walk offers a closer look at a neighbourhood whose small-scale streets contrast with the grand palace complex across the valley.

The Albaicín retains the character of Granada’s Moorish past in its winding routes and traditional houses. This is an Optional Experience at additional cost, bookable on tour.

Visit Toledo on an Optional Experience from Madrid. Set above a bend in the River Tagus, this hilltop city is known for its dense historic streets and a skyline marked by centuries of changing rule and religious life.

Its Christian, Jewish and Islamic heritage makes Toledo a distinctive contrast to the modern capital. The itinerary does not specify a route or monument entries for this excursion. It is at additional cost and bookable on tour.