Iberian Cultures

The Iberian Peninsula packs an enormous range of geography, language, and history into a relatively small space, and this nine-day itinerary makes the most of that compression. Your group moves through four genuinely distinct places — the Atlantic-facing capital of Lisbon, the cliff-lined beaches of the Algarve Coast, the Moorish grandeur of Seville, and the museum-dense heart of Madrid — tracing a loose arc from Portugal's western edge to the center of Spain. The two languages, two national identities, and two very different urban personalities give students constant material for comparison, and the contrasts tend to stick in ways that classroom lectures rarely do.