Medieval France

This morning, you'll bump shoulders with the locals while exploring the Victor Hugo Market on a shared food tour. Your guide will take you around a variety of stalls while explaining the regional delicacies on sale. As the group makes its way through the market, your guide will put together a picnic for you to enjoy at the final stop, the market's wine bar.

Today, you'll venture outside of Toulouse for a day trip to Albi, one of the most important medieval towns in the region. So much remains from this period that the entire city was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With your guide, you'll explore the town and learn about its central role in the Albiginsian Crusade. On your way back to Toulouse, you'll stop at a winery in the Gallaic region for a wine tasting. Grapes were brought to this area by the Romans in the 1st century, making it one of the oldest wine-growing regions in France.

Spend the day touring some of the best-preserved medieval areas in Southern France. Your private guide will begin the day by taking you to Foix Castle, where re-enactors help explain life in the area during the Middle Ages. In the afternoon, you'll visit the Cathar stronghold of Montsegur before sitting down for a refreshing drink in the well-preserved town square in Mirepoix.

Today, you'll immerse yourself in the world of knights and princesses as you visit Carcassonne, the best-preserved medieval fortress in the world. Upon arrival, you'll check into the hotel and have a couple of hours to explore the town on your own. This afternoon, you'll venture to the "new town" to board a cruise down the Canal du Midi. This UNESCO World Heritage Site was an engineering marvel when it was constructed in the 17th century. In the evening, you'll take a guided tour through the old town of Carcassonne. Visiting at night allows you to avoid the crowds while the street lights give the stone buildings and cobblestoned streets an almost magical quality.

Heading south of Carcassonne, you'll spend the day exploring the origins of sparkling wine. During the early 16th century and over a hundred years before Dom Pérignon, the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire created a sparkling wine by accident. After much trial and error, they came up with the process to create blanquette, the world’s first method for creating sparkling wine. Your guide will lead you through the abbey, including the cellar where blanquette was first created. Afterwards, you’ll have the opportunity to relax in the cloister and sample a glass of “Blanquette Ancestral”, created in the same traditional method used by monks from centuries gone by. Next, you will visit the Guinet winery, the oldest commercial producer of blanquette in the world. Here you will have a tour of the facilities which will explain the process of how blanquette is produced today. To end the tour, you will be offered a few varieties of blanquette that are produced at the winery.

Today, you'll say goodbye to Carcassonne and travel to Collioure on the Mediterranean coast. Along the way, you'll stop at the Abbaye de Fontfroide, one of the most powerful abbeys in the Middle Ages. Here, you'll have a guided tour of the abbey, the beautiful gardens, and have a chance to sample wines from the vineyard, planted by the monks nearly a millennium ago.

From the Mallorcan kings of the Middle Ages to early 20th-century artists such as Picasso and Matisse, Collioure has been one of the most famous holiday destinations on the Catalan coast. Today, your private guide will take you on a walking tour of the city to explore the historical buildings, cobblestoned streets, and beautiful vistas.

You'll have a free day to relax as you finish up your trip to France. There are plenty of activities to do if you don't want to spend the day relaxing on the beach. You can take a catamaran tour up the coast, snorkel in the Cerbère-Banyul Marine Reserve, or take a wine blending course at a local family-owned winery.

This morning, you'll be transferred to Barcelona Airport for your flight home.