Here are some of our thoughts on private Spain tours and travel after living here for a decade + and planning 2500+ tours.
Many people ask us: how big is Spain? Before we explain let us mention that it’s large enough that most of our customers who travel Spain via our private tours for 7 to 14 days want to return.
The reason is there is so much regional diversity. So curious cultural travelers want to discover the many Spanish UNESCO attractions, and crazy cultural experiences. And especially the amazing Spanish regional foods & wines that are becoming all the rage among the most savvy luxury travelers.
Spain is bigger than it seems, and is similar in size to Texas but with way more variety of cultures, 4 official languages and lots of mountain ranges. In fact Spain has the second highest average altitude in Europe.
It’s almost the largest country of western Europe (just a bit smaller than France)and crisscrossed by mountains that made the regions very unique and hard to unify.
The UN World Heritage list champion is Italy and Spain is second, so even with 10 days, one will experience a small slice of what’s available.
See our customer’s #1 favorite Best of Spain trip ideas here.
For these 2 reasons, we would advise to save Portugal for another trip perhaps combined with a bit of NW Spain’s green Celtic influenced regions. See some of our best ideas for Portugal travel here.
+ https://magicalspain.com/best-of-spain-portugal-private-luxury-tour/
+ https://magicalspain.com/best-of-portugal-private-luxury-tour/
and even more here. https://magicalspain.com/portugal/.
Locally Licensed Guides: The guide profession in Spain is highly regulated closed shop situation.
It requires locally licensed guides for each city. This means while we could program a guide to travel with you for 10 days, they could not legally guide you in the UNESCO-listed monuments. In fact the local guides can be quite protective of their turf. So we’d need the local guides also but you are guaranteed an expert. This all will add a lot of expense but is doable if you desire.
Private chauffeured deluxe transport: With 4 persons, we’d normally use a Mercedes van that seats 8 officially.If you wanted something biggger, there are plenty of options for 12 – 18 seat deluxe mini-buses.
Activity & tour variety & intensity: there are many many options and we specialize in customizing our trips with both the “must-see attractions” + lesser known “off the beaten path experiences. So I am sure we can offer compatible activities, unique places & active experiences,
Hope this helps!
Please advise your thoughts,Rachel Harris
http://www.MagicalSpain.com “USA’s #1 Spain & Portugal Tour Experts…Siesta-Free since 1998”
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P.S.
Congratulations! Your list is quite good I can see your history expertise serves you well 🙂 You ask how big is Spain?
Spain is big, so it’s impossible to even half of the UNESO sites in 10 days. This is all right in our wheelhouse.
We typically cover those attractions on our Best of Spain private trip.
As you know, we customize our trips so we’d just reverse the order to start in Barcelona.
As to additions, I’d consider what we (and most experts) consider the huge & unique medieval cathedral of Seville with the Moorish minaret tower converted to Christian bell tower.
Then in from Madrid, a private day trip to Toledo for the Cathedral and old town (lots of churches though)
or Segovia. Both are very impressive. Segovia is probably a bit more romantic with a bit less tourism, amazing Roman aquaduct and spectacular castle on a clifftop.
We often combine Segovia with a quick visit to La Granja, a Royal countryside palace and gardens of a French Spanish King who was inspired by Versailles in France.
Below you can see the starting 2019 pricing with both 5 star & 4 star options for the Best of Spain private trip.
For bookings by Oct 15, 2019 you will get the 2020 trip at 2019 pricing 🙂