Best of Spain and Portugal

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After 15 days across Spain and Portugal, you transfer to the airport with new friendships, memories of grand cities, shared tables and extraordinary art.