Madrid & Seville Retreat

Time may vary depending on your personal flight.

This transfer will take about 35 minutes.

Feel the emotion and passion of the Spanish culture Seville is one of the birthplaces of flamenco music. Suburbs such as Triana and La Macarena are a melting pot of flamenco influences, and the city is full of superb venues offering live performances. We will meet our local guide in our hotel and enjoy a stroll through the city center to a renowned flamenco venue. As we walk, our guide will prepare us to dip our toe into the underworld of flamenco, its history, origins and influences before sitting down to watch a live flamenco performance. The selected venues invite different professional artists to perform each night to ensure maximum spontaneity and quality in each show. After enjoying the flamenco show, our guide will take us on a tapas tour where we will be able to rub shoulders with the locals and sample some of Seville’s top tapas in the buzzing bars of the city center.

Your guide & driver will meet you in the hotel lobby in Seville, and they will transfer you to Faro. Enjoy a guided visit to the old town of Faro where you will visit the ancient Arab entrance gate to the city dating back to the 11th century, the Roman forum, the episcopal palace, the old Jewish quarter and other interesting places. The history and stories of Portugal and its culture spread across two thirds of the world. After this, we will travel 8km east to Faro, to the Natural Park of Ria Formosa, where you will enjoy a local lunch. Faro Between the second and eighth centuries, the city was under the domain of the Romans, then the Byzantines, and later Visigoths, before being conquered by the Arabic-speaking Muslims known as Moors in 713.[5] From the third century onwards and during the Visigothic period, it was the site of an Episcopal see,[5] the Ancient Diocese of Ossonoba (306-688). The Byzantine presence has endured in the city walls' towers that were built during the Byzantine period. With the advent of Moorish rule in the eighth century, Ossonoba retained its status as the most important town in the southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula.[5] In the 9th century, after a revolt[6] led by Yahia Ben Bakr who was succeeded in office by his son, Bakr Ben Yahia, it became the capital of a short-lived princedom and was fortified with a ring of defensive walls.[5] At this time, in the 10th century, the name Santa Maria began to be used instead of Ossonoba. By the 11th century, the town was known as Santa Maria Ibn Harun.[5] During the Second Crusade soon after the Anglo-Norman forces took Lisbon in 1147 a detachment of this group sacked Faro, which was still by then under Muslim rule, on their way to the Holy Land. Again in 1217, during the Fifth Crusade, a Frisian fleet of crusaders on their way to Acre, sacked and burned the city.[7] During the 500 years of Moorish rule, some Jewish residents of Faro made written copies of the Old Testament. The Moors were defeated and expelled in 1249 by the forces of the Portuguese King Afonso III. With the decline of the importance of the city of Silves (which was made the regional bishopric as Diocese of Silves shortly during and properly after the Reconquista), Faro took over the role of administration of the Algarve area. El Algarve is the southernmost region of mainland Portugal . Its territory corresponds to the inter-municipal community of Algarve. It encompasses a subregion with the same name and with the same dimensions, and which also corresponds, in its breadth, to the traditional province of the same size, the district of Faro and the new Greater Metropolitan Area of the Algarve The Algarve has beautiful beaches and natural landscapes, being the most touristic of the Portuguese provinces. Two of the largest tourist complexes in Europe are in the Algarve: Vilamoura , next to Falésia beach (municipality of Loulé ), and Rocha beach in the town of Portimão.

It takes 2 hours from Faro to Seville

It takes 1 hour and ½

The Mosque of Córdoba was the biggest one in the world once all the extensions were concluded in the tenth century. More than 20 000 people could fit inside, and it was declared World Heritage in 1984. All travellers who visited the Mosque were dazzled when they saw its beauty. You shouldn’t leave Córdoba without visiting its main touristic attraction! Its characteristic double arches and its impressive mihrab will leave you speechless. The monument has multiple architectonical styles, which makes it unique in the world.

It takes 1 hour and ½ to Seville.