Category: Spain

Tapas, Port and Sherry: Food and Wine Across an Iberian Journey

Tapas, Port and Sherry: Food and Wine Across an Iberian Journey Porto and the Douro at golden hour — one of three distinct food and wine traditions on a route through Spain and Portugal. Travel far enough across the Iberian Peninsula and the food changes as often as the architecture does. In Madrid, the evening […]

Seville, Jerez and Cádiz: An Andalucía Itinerary for Seniors

Seville, Jerez and Cádiz: An Andalucía Itinerary for Seniors Seville, Jerez de la Frontera and Cádiz sit within roughly ninety minutes’ drive of one another, yet each pulls at a different thread of the same Andalusian story. Seville carries the formal weight of Golden Age wealth; Jerez holds the sherry houses and stable yards that […]

Córdoba to Granada: Tracing Al-Andalus in Southern Spain

Córdoba to Granada: Tracing Al-Andalus in Southern Spain The Alhambra seen from the Albaicín at dusk — the old Nasrid capital’s final and most enduring vantage point. Two cities, roughly three hours apart by road, hold most of what remains visible of eight centuries of Islamic rule in Spain. Córdoba was once the seat of […]

Moorish Architecture in Spain: Reading Córdoba, Seville and Granada

Moorish Architecture in Spain: Reading Córdoba, Seville and Granada The Alhambra above Granada — the final chapter in a story that begins in Córdoba. Three buildings, three cities, one continuous story. The Mezquita in Córdoba, the Alcázar in Seville and the Alhambra in Granada were not built as a matched set — they span more […]

Spain and Portugal Travel for Seniors: A 24-Day Preparation Guide

Spain and Portugal Travel for Seniors: A 24-Day Preparation Guide The approach to the Alhambra involves sustained walking on gravel and uneven stone — a fair test of the tour’s Level 2 activity rating. Twenty-four days across two countries sounds ambitious on paper — a route that runs from Gaudí’s Barcelona to the Alhambra’s honeyed […]

Mérida, Spain’s Roman Ruins: Inside Ancient Emerita Augusta

Mérida, Spain’s Roman Ruins: Inside Ancient Emerita Augusta The two-tiered marble stage backdrop of the Roman Theatre, built between 16 and 15 BC, still hosts performances each summer. Long before Madrid existed as anything more than a fortified outpost, Emerita Augusta stood as the capital of an entire Roman province, its theatre seating six thousand […]

Toledo Day Trip from Madrid: Spain’s City of Three Cultures

Toledo’s old town, wrapped almost entirely by a bend in the Tagus River, with the Cathedral and Alcázar anchoring the skyline. Forty-five minutes from Madrid by high-speed train, the medieval streets of Toledo climb a granite outcrop wrapped almost entirely by a bend in the Tagus River — a defensive position so complete that the […]

Salamanca, Spain: University City and Gateway to Portugal

Salamanca, Spain: University City and Gateway to Portugal Salamanca’s Roman Bridge spans the Tormes River, with the city’s cathedral skyline rising behind it. Salamanca announces itself in colour. Its sandstone buildings turn amber and gold as the afternoon light lengthens across the Plaza Mayor, a hue so distinctive that Spaniards call the city la Dorada […]

Salamanca to Lisbon: Crossing the Spain–Portugal Border

Salamanca’s Roman Bridge and cathedral skyline on the Tormes River, the starting point of this crossing into Portugal. A Salamanca to Lisbon itinerary is one of the more overlooked stretches of Iberian travel, mostly because guidebooks tend to treat Spain and Portugal as two separate trips joined by a border crossing to get through quickly. […]

Spain and Portugal Itinerary: Barcelona to Granada in 24 Days

Spain and Portugal Itinerary: Barcelona to Granada in 24 Days Spain and Portugal are usually sold as two separate holidays, yet neither country’s history makes complete sense without the other. Their royal houses intermarried, warred and signed treaties with one another for six centuries. Their empires raced each other across the same oceans and drew […]

Spain and Portugal Tours for Seniors: A Guide to the Journey

Spain and Portugal Small-Group Tour: How a 24-Day Iberian Journey Works The Alhambra and Generalife above Granada, the final stop on the 24-day route from Barcelona. The word Iberia covers two countries that spent centuries defining themselves against each other, and a well-built itinerary treats that tension as the point rather than a logistical inconvenience. […]

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao: A Modern Landmark on a Spain Journey

The Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao: A Modern Landmark on a Spain Journey Most of the buildings on a Spain and Portugal itinerary are older than the nations that now claim them — Roman theatres, Gothic cathedrals, Moorish palaces built and rebuilt across a thousand years. The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is barely three decades old, and that […]

Barcelona to Granada Itinerary: A Spain and Portugal Journey

Barcelona to Granada Itinerary: A Spain and Portugal Journey The Alhambra and Generalife above Granada at golden hour — the journey’s end for this 24-day route from Barcelona. Draw a line on a map from Barcelona to Granada and it looks arbitrary — a diagonal cut across the Iberian Peninsula. Follow it on the ground, […]

Basque Country, Spain: Why the Northern Route Changes Your Trip

Basque Country, Spain: Why the Northern Route Changes Your Trip La Rioja’s vineyard terraces mark the first stage of the route north from Barcelona. La Rioja’s vineyards run out to the horizon in tidy rows, the light turning them copper by late afternoon. Two hours north, Pamplona’s medieval walls still enclose a city famous for […]

Al-Andalus, Spain: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Ruleain

Al-Andalus: History of Islamic Spain In 711 CE, Muslim armies crossed from North Africa into the Iberian Peninsula and, within a few years, brought most of modern Spain and Portugal under Islamic rule for the next seven centuries. The society they built, Al-Andalus, became renowned for its libraries, medicine, and architecture, reaching its height under […]

Spanish Exploration and Conquest of the Americas

In 1492 Christopher Columbus first arrived in the Americas searching for a more direct route to Asia. Little did he know that his voyage would spark a process of colonization and conquest over more than three centuries that would transform the Americas. In the process the Spanish Empire decimated the established civilisations and native peoples, plundering and extracting unheard of amounts of wealth.

Pillars of Hercules: History, Location, and Myth at the Strait of Gibraltar

The Pillars of Hercules is the ancient name referring to the two promontories at the eastern entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar, a narrow opening 14 kilometres wide between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean separating the continents of Africa and Europe.

Cadiz, Spain

Cadiz city, on the western coast of southern Spain, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe. Its archaeological remains date back to the 8th century BC, around the time it was founded as a Phoenician outpost. Since then, it has played an important role as a sea port for trade and exploration and a strategic naval base amongst a host of cultures and civilisations, including the Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths, Moors, and Spanish to name a few.

The Phoenicians and Purple Dye

The most expensive and treasured product of the Phoenician civilization was the famous Tyrian purple dye (also known as Phoenician purple, royal purple, imperial purple, or imperial dye) extracted from the mucus of the murex shellfish.

Highlights of Seville

Seville is a lively and disarming city, and a popular tourist destination in Spain.

Challenges of Art Restoration

The Challenges of Art Restoration For centuries, professionals have been restoring masterpiece artworks back to their original appearance or function so that future generations can also experience their grandeur. Restoration involves any attempt to preserve and repair paintings, drawings, sculptures, architecture, or objects of the decorative arts. It focuses on the repair or renovation of […]