Best of Spain and Portugal - Small Group end Madrid

Arrive in Madrid, Spain’s capital since the 16th century, where the grand layout of the Bourbon period meets older barrios built around markets and neighborhood squares. Meet your Travel Director and your small group over dinner in a local restaurant, sharing a meal and getting to know the people you’ll be traveling with across Spain and Portugal.

Explore Madrid’s central neighborhoods with your Local Expert, moving through the Old Quarter that grew around the city’s original medieval fortress and later expanded under the Habsburgs. Continue to the Prado Museum, founded in 1819 and recognized for its extensive European collection. You’ll join an art historian to view works by Velázquez, Goya, Titian, Rubens and others, gaining clear context for the artists who shaped Spain’s cultural record.

Travel to Segovia and walk its historic streets with a Local Expert, viewing the Alcázar fortress that once guarded the approach to the Castilian plain. After your stop at the Alcázar, you’ll continue to the Roman aqueduct, a 1st-century engineering work that supplied the city with water for centuries. From here, you’ll journey on to Salamanca, passing the medieval walls of Ávila. On arrival, your inimitable Local Expert will guide you to Plaza Mayor and the university buildings that shaped the city’s academic life from the 13th century.

Cross into Portugal and travel to Porto, a city shaped by its medieval Ribeira district and long history of Atlantic trade. Begin at the wine cellars of Vila Nova de Gaia, where port has been stored and aged since the 18th century, and join a guided tasting that introduces the region’s unmistakable flavors, from the golden tawny to deep red rubies. Continue with an orientation tour led by your Travel Director through the key riverside quarters and stepped streets. Afterwards, you’ll have time to explore spots such as the São Bento station’s tile panels, the riverside lanes of the Ribeira, or the compact merchants’ quarters around Clérigos Tower.