A Luxury Journey Across Portugal & Morocco

Two full days in Lisbon give you space to move through it at the right pace. Begin in the Alfama, the city’s oldest surviving district, where the lanes are too narrow for traffic, and the tiled facades catch the morning light in a way that has made this one of Europe’s most photographed urban neighborhoods.

A private guide makes the difference here, opening up access to the azulejo-tiled interiors of the Igreja de São Vicente de Fora and providing context that a self-guided walk simply can’t deliver.

Dedicate one afternoon to Belém, a short tram ride west along the Tagus. The Jerónimos Monastery is one of the finest surviving examples of Manueline architecture in the world; the Belém Tower, standing at the river’s edge, is one of Portugal’s most recognized landmarks. Both reward the effort of getting there.

Evenings in Lisbon have their own particular pleasure. The Bairro Alto and Príncipe Real neighborhoods have long been the centre of the city’s LGBTQ+ scene, with a cluster of bars and restaurants around Rua da Atalaia and Rua do Século that fill up gradually from around ten o’clock. For a more formal evening, the hotel’s own restaurant, Bahr, serves contemporary Portuguese cuisine with terrace views across the rooftops.

Sintra sits 40 minutes west of Lisbon by private car and looks exactly like a place that nineteenth-century Romantic poets would have invented if it didn’t already exist: steep forested hills, a royal palace inside the village, and a series of extraordinary estate gardens and folly-palaces climbing the hillside above. The Palácio da Pena is the most famous, its Bavarian fairy-tale architecture improbable against the Atlantic skyline. The Quinta da Regaleira, with its initiatory well and labyrinthine gardens, is quieter and in some ways more interesting. A private guide keeps both approachable and significantly less crowded than the standard tour experience. Return to Lisbon in the late afternoon with time for a long dinner.

The flight from Lisbon to Marrakech takes around two and a half hours. A private transfer meets you at Marrakech Menara Airport and brings you to one of the most celebrated hotel entrances in the world. La Mamounia hotel, known for its rich, Moorish style, is known as one of the greatest luxury hotels in Morocco. Spend the rest of the afternoon by the pool, explore the gardens, or begin your exploration of the spa before a long dinner at one of the hotel’s four restaurants.

Two full days in Marrakech, using La Mamounia as your base.

On day six, a private guide takes you into the medina: the Jemaa el-Fna square, which transforms from a daytime market into an open-air theater of food stalls and street performers as evening approaches; the souks behind it, organised by trade into separate quarters for spices, leather, metalwork, and textiles.

You’ll also visit the Bahia Palace, a nineteenth-century vizier’s residence with some of the finest decorative tilework in the city, as well as the YSL Museum.

The YSL Museum, also known as Yves Saint Laurent’s former residence that he shared with his boyfriend, holds the complete archive of his collections and occupies a building designed by Studio KO in the Jardin Majorelle, the cobalt-blue garden that Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé bought and restored in 1980.

For the community that has long claimed the YSL legacy as part of its own cultural inheritance, this is a visit with particular resonance.

Day seven is deliberately slower. The La Mamounia spa stretches across 2,500 square meters on three levels, drawing on hammam tradition in its ritual bathing circuits while offering a full menu of contemporary treatments. Book the full hammam experience: the exfoliation, the rhassoul clay, and the massage that follows.

The gardens, a mix of olive groves, rose borders, and orange trees within the original eighteenth-century walls, are worth exploring in the morning before the heat of the afternoon.

Dinner at Le Français, the hotel’s fine-dining restaurant, is the appropriate close to the day.

A private day trip into the High Atlas Mountains, around an hour from Marrakech, passes through the Tizi n’Tichka pass and down into Berber villages where the landscape shifts from terracotta city to snow-tipped peaks and cultivated valley floors.

The village of Imlil, set at the base of North Africa’s highest mountain, is the furthest point: a working agricultural community where the pace of life is entirely different from the medina.

Lunch at a small family-run restaurant in the mountains, then return to Marrakech and La Mamounia in the late afternoon.

A final day at La Mamounia. Return to the spa, take a late breakfast in the garden, or revisit a corner of the medina missed earlier in the trip. The hotel’s Churchill Bar, named for the hotel’s most famous repeat guest, is the right place for a final Marrakech evening: dark wood, Art Deco detail, and a cocktail list that has been perfected over a century.

Day 10 consists of a private transfer to Marrakech Menara Airport and a flight home to take in all of the relaxation.

LGBTQ+ Context: Portugal is one of Europe’s most progressive destinations for LGBTQ+ travellers. Same-sex marriage has been legal since 2010. Morocco operates under a very different legal framework: same-sex activity is criminalized, and travellers should exercise discretion. Our team will provide a full pre-departure briefing on what to expect and how to travel with confidence.

Best Time to Travel: April to June and September to November are ideal for both destinations. Marrakech summers are extremely hot; December to February can be cold in the mountains.