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- Day 1 Share Dinner in Barcelona 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 travelers 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. Locations Visited: Barcelona ES.
- Day 2 Barcelona in Detail: Gaudí and Modernism 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. Colored 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. Locations Visited: Barcelona ES.
- Day 3 Journey From Costa Dorada to Valencia 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 savory aroma wafting through the room. Dinner follows with the finished paella and a cool glass of wine. Locations Visited: Barcelona ES, Valencia ES.
- Day 4 Granada’s Moorish Legacy: Alhambra and Generalife 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. Locations Visited: Valencia ES, Purullena ES, Granada ES.
- Day 5 Explore Granada Before Traveling to Seville 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. Locations Visited: Granada ES, Seville ES.
- Day 6 Discover Seville’s Cathedral and Flamenco Traditions 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. Locations Visited: Seville ES.
- Day 7 Spain’s Historic Heart: Córdoba to Madrid Traveling 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. Locations Visited: Seville ES, Córdoba ES, Madrid ES.
- Day 8 Explore Madrid Through Art and Old Streets In Madrid’s oldest neighborhoods, 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 neighborhood 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 travelers in the heart of Madrid. Locations Visited: Madrid ES.
- Day 9 Bid Farewell to Madrid and Spain 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. Locations Visited: Madrid ES.
Name: Highlights of Spain
Brand: Trafalgar
Quality: Superior First Class
Tour Type: Escorted
Start City: Barcelona
End City: Madrid
Location Summary: Barcelona, ES, Valencia, ES, Purullena, ES, Granada, ES, Seville, ES, Córdoba, ES, Madrid, ES
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Highlights
- Dining Summary - 4 Dinner (D). 8 Breakfast (B).
- 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.
- MAKE TRAVEL MATTER® - Barcelona: At La Pau, you’ll sit down to a seasonal Catalan menu in a restaurant built around social impact. Dishes are prepared and served by young people in training, many moving on from care or disrupted schooling. Paid work, mentoring and a clear structure help them gain skills in the kitchen and dining room as they move towards independent living. Your visit directly supports United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities.. Seville: The Cristina Heeren Foundation promotes the teaching and preservation of flamenco and is supported by a TreadRight Foundation grant. Meet students, learn a few basic steps and watch them perform, gaining insight into how the school trains young artists in guitar, singing and dance. Your visit directly supports United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education..
- Top Rated Highlights - Barcelona: Explore Barcelona with a Local Specialist who sets out the city’s shape from street level — the long run of Passeig de Gràcia, the sharp grid of the Eixample and the way the skyline shifts as the Sagrada Família comes into view. The route ties together the city’s Modernista detail and its ongoing architectural change.. Peñíscola: See Peñíscola’s 14th-century castle rising above the old town, set on a limestone headland that divides the shoreline.. Valencia: Get your bearings in Valencia’s Old City as your Travel Director points out the surviving medieval gateways and the street grid shaped by centuries of expansion.. Seville: Visit Seville Cathedral, completed in the 16th century and recognized as the largest Gothic cathedral in the world. Walk through its vast nave and chapels and view the Giralda, originally built as the minaret of the 12th-century Almohad mosque. The cathedral’s scale and layered construction show how the site developed from Islamic to Christian use.. Córdoba: In Córdoba, you’ll join your Travel Director for a short orientation that helps fix the city on the map. Walk by the Roman bridge over the Guadalquivir, pass the old gateway towers and step into the historic center, where whitewashed houses, small squares and hidden patios show how this older part of the city fits together.. Córdoba: Visit the Mezquita with a local historian to trace how a mosque became a cathedral. You’ll step into a forest of striped arches and columns from the original Islamic building, then see later Christian additions including the central choir and chapels.. Madrid: Explore Madrid’s Old Quarter with a Local Specialist who outlines how the district developed from a small medieval citadel into the center of Habsburg Madrid. You’ll see the compact street grid, market squares and civic buildings that shaped the early city, and trace how each layer of expansion created the foundations of the modern capital..
- Authentic Dining - 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 flavor and socarrat crust you’ve just watched being made.. Madrid: Sit down to dinner with your Travel Director and fellow travelers at a local restaurant..
- Premium Experience - Granada: Visit Alhambra 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..
