16-night Transatlantic: Italy, France & Spain Cruise

Alicante is located on Spain’s Costa Blanca in the Levant Region, along the country’s southeastern coast and is a tourist resort and commercial port. The region is marked by lush mountain ranges. During the Gothic era of the fifteenth through sixteenth centuries centuries, art and architecture flourished in Alicante and the remainder of the Levant Region. Immense palaces and grandiose churches were built with elaborate baroque details. Visitors can see a third century BC fortress - the citadel of Santa Bárbara built by ruler Amilcar Barca, a Carthaginian, Arrabal Roig - the old quarter, the Baroque town hall (1701-60), the Church of Santa María (14th century), and the Renaissance church of San Nicolás de Bari (18th century).

The nine mountainous islands of the Azores were long a haven for Atlantic traders and explorers sailing between the Old and New Worlds. On the green and fertile island of Sao Miguel, Ponta Delgada was once no more than a fishing village. 16th and 17th century economic growth saw the construction of lavish palaces and churches of the period, many still surviving. Not to be missed are the twin crater lakes of Sete Cidades, just a causeway apart, but the one blue, the other green.