17 nights, Barcelona to Barcelona

The itinerary, port by port

12 calls over 17 nights, round-trip from Barcelona. Open any port for my full day-ashore guide, what to see, when to go, and how the day actually runs.

Getting there: Flights to Barcelona (BCN) open around May 2027, about 11 months before you sail. I track that window for booked clients and flag it the moment it is worth booking. When to book your flights →

1. Embark
   Barcelona

   Barcelona packs Gaudí's modernisme, a 2,000-year-old Roman and medieval core, and a working Mediterranean waterfront into a single dense, walkable city. Port guide →

2. 2
   Alicante

   Alicante is a working Costa Blanca city that puts a hilltop Moorish fortress, a marble seafront promenade, and a maze-like medieval quarter inside a single walkable radius from the cruise pier. Port guide →

3. 3
   Málaga

   Málaga is the working capital of the Costa del Sol and the birthplace of Picasso, and its old town packs a Moorish hilltop fortress, a 1st-century BC Roman theater, and an unfinished Renaissance cathedral… Port guide →

4. 4
   Gibraltar

   Gibraltar is a 2.6 square mile British territory built around a single limestone monolith at the mouth of the Mediterranean, where you hear English, pay in pounds, and look across the strait toward Morocco. Port guide →

5. 5
   Cadiz

   Cádiz sits on a narrow Atlantic peninsula in Andalusia and is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, a compact old town ringed by sea on three sides. Port guide →

6. 6
   Palma de Mallorca

   Palma is the capital of Mallorca and the largest city in the Balearics, built in warm honey-colored sandstone around a sandstone Gothic cathedral that rises straight off the seafront. Port guide →

7. 7
   Valencia

   Spain's third city pairs a dense medieval core, where the Holy Grail sits inside a Gothic cathedral, with Calatrava's white modernist science city built into a drained riverbed. Port guide →

8. 8
   Tangier

   Tangier sits where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic at the Strait of Gibraltar, a Moroccan port city with a walled medina, a hilltop kasbah, and a long history as an international crossroads. Port guide →

9. 9
   Casablanca

   Casablanca is Morocco's commercial capital, a big Atlantic port city whose case for the day rests almost entirely on one building: the Hassan II Mosque, one of the largest in the world, with a minaret… Port guide →

10. 10
    Santa Cruz de Tenerife

    Santa Cruz is the capital of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, a working Spanish city under a volcanic skyline rather than a beach resort, with a walkable old center and Calatrava's wave-shaped Auditorio on… Port guide →

11. 11
    Funchal (Madeira)

    Funchal is the capital of Madeira, a Portuguese volcanic island in the Atlantic, and the port sits a short walk from a working city built up a steep amphitheater of hills. Port guide →

12. Disembark
    Puerto Banús (Marbella)

    Puerto Banús is a purpose-built luxury marina on the Costa del Sol, opened in 1970 just southwest of Marbella, lined with designer boutiques, megayachts, and open-air restaurants.