6 nights, Barcelona to Santa Cruz de Tenerife

Six nights, five stops, and a real arc to it: this sailing runs from Barcelona down past the Strait of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic, finishing in the Canary Islands at Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The route trades one kind of stop for another as it goes. Barcelona opens it with range, Gaudí's Sagrada Família in the morning and the Gothic Quarter's medieval alleys by afternoon, all from a single dense, walkable city. Then comes Ceuta, a Spanish town sitting on the African coast with tapas bars and Portuguese fortifications, where you step off the ship and into the center on foot. Casablanca's day rests almost entirely on the Hassan II Mosque, its minaret rising over the ocean, with interior access only on a fixed-schedule tour. The two Canary calls, Arrecife and Santa Cruz, lean volcanic: lava fields, César Manrique's cave-and-art sites, and a working Spanish city under a volcanic skyline rather than a beach resort.

This rewards a traveler who wants variety over depth and reads a port for its one strong thing. Casablanca and Arrecife each hinge on a single anchor, so plan around the mosque's tour slots and your Lanzarote pier. Skip it if you want long, slow days in one country, or expect resort beaches; Santa Cruz's coast is gray volcanic sand, not the postcard.

Explora II is all-suite, all-oceanfront.