Highlights of Spain

Along Ciutat Vella’s stone lanes, you may catch the sound of church bells ringing across the city as the warm scent of roasted peppers and garlic drifts from restaurant kitchens, before joining your Travel Director and fellow travellers for dinner at La Pau. The scent of slow-cooked Catalan dishes fills the restaurant while the city murmurs beyond the door. At the table, illuminated words glow across the dark bar, each one expressing a hope or dream shared by a young person from El Llindar. Over dinner, you hear about life in the city and how paid work at La Pau is helping them build independence.

With your Local Specialist beside you, travel along Passeig de Gràcia, where wrought-iron street lamps and sweeping Modernist façades turn Barcelona’s grand avenue into an open-air gallery. In the Eixample district, enter Gaudí’s Sagrada Família* and let your gaze climb its tree-like pillars towards the vast stone vaults above. Coloured light pours through the intricate stained glass, casting pools of blue, gold and crimson across the central nave. The afternoon is yours to explore Barcelona or join an Optional Experience to Montserrat and the Black Madonna. *Access to the Sagrada Família may be restricted during special masses, pilgrim visits or official ceremonies. Should this happen, you will visit the Hospital de Sant Pau, a striking example of Catalan Art Nouveau designed by Gaudí’s contemporary, Domènech i Montaner. Afterwards, join your Local Specialist in the gardens surrounding the Sagrada Família to admire the extraordinary detail of Gaudí’s exterior.

The Mediterranean stretches beyond the window as you follow the Costa Dorada past the Ebro Delta’s wide rice fields to Peñíscola. High above the water, you may catch sight of the stone castle used in ‘El Cid’ crowns the headland. Beyond Peñíscola, rows of orange trees unfurl along the road, their glossy leaves creating deep green ribbons across the landscape. At Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences, white curves sweep above broad reflecting pools. In the Old City, worn stone walls and close-set streets lead to a family-run restaurant. Beside the chef, you hear the broad pan sizzle, feel the heat against your skin and breathe in the savoury aroma wafting through the room. Dinner follows with the finished paella and a cool glass of wine.

South of Lorca, its castle recedes behind you as the road threads towards Guadix, past cave homes cut into soft, chalky rock. The Sierra Nevada rises ahead, and beneath its peaks waits Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain until 1492. At the Alhambra, your Local Specialist leads you beneath carved arches and across intimate courtyards, with stonework cut as finely as lace covering the walls. Cooler air lingers beneath the arcades as your eyes trace the arabesque patterns and garden paths enclosed within the 13th-century citadel. At the Generalife, fountain water murmurs beside your path as you walk through the elegant gardens of the former royal summer residence.

Granada is yours to explore at leisure, or you may join an Optional Experience through the Albaicín with a Local Specialist. You'll wander down the Albaicín’s narrow cobbled lanes between whitewashed houses and small squares, before Granada spreads below and your Local Specialist explains the city’s pivotal place in European history. Continuing to Seville, gleaming white villages scatter across the hills and olive groves stretch in silver-green rows beyond the window.

Seville is yours to explore. You may choose an Optional Experience that opens the doors to the city's Pilatos Palace, where bands of golden glazed tiles sparkle across colonnaded courtyards and intricately carved ceilings. Or choose the Real Alcázar and nearby Plaza América instead, home to graceful pavilions from the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition. Continue exploring with your Local Specialist through the atmospheric Santa Cruz Quarter, its narrow passageways leading you through Seville’s old Jewish quarter. Inside Seville Cathedral, immense, sprawling Gothic vaults stretch overhead as you pause before Christopher Columbus’s monumental tomb in the world’s largest Gothic cathedral. At the Cristina Heeren Foundation, take part in a MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® Experience and learn the graceful movements of flamenco before watching a live performance.

Travelling through the Guadalquivir Valley, you'll pass Moorish towers and fortress walls, their stone profiles breaking the long horizon. In Córdoba, pause beside the Guadalquivir to take in the broad arches of the city’s 1st-century BC Roman Bridge. With your Local Specialist, you'll enter the Mezquita and walk beneath its red-and-white arches, which recede through a forest of columns around the Christian cathedral. Free time lets you follow the old city’s lanes as they bend away from the Mezquita in every direction. Across the long plains of La Mancha, you'll trace the route linked forever with Don Quixote before continuing to Madrid.

In Madrid’s oldest neighbourhoods, your Local Specialist leads you past wrought-iron balconies and timeworn façades, following the capital back to its beginnings. At the Prado Museum, an art historian guides you from canvas to canvas, as you gaze at the sheen of painted silk, deep pools of shadow and the sweep of crimson and gold across the canvas in works by Velázquez, Goya, Titian and Rubens. The afternoon belongs to you. Perhaps follow the rich scent of freshly ground coffee into a neighbourhood cafe, browse the city’s boutiques or join an Optional Experience to Toledo. Later, regional dishes and wine are shared with your Travel Director and fellow travellers in the heart of Madrid.

Your time in Spain comes to a close with a transfer to Madrid-Barajas Airport. You may find yourself thinking back to the places you explored, the people you met and the moments shared along the way.