The Iberian Peninsula and Fortified cities of the Atlantic

Cruise overview

With featured guest Franck Ferrand.

From Lisbon to Honfleur, PONANT invites you aboard l’Austral for a 12-day cruise, that will take you along the Portuguese Spanish and French Atlantic coastlines.

Throughout your journey, you will benefit from an excursion included per person per port of call, to choose from a selection offered by PONANT. On this cruise, explore the Santiago de Compostela site from Vigo, visit the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, or discover the Mont Saint-Michel from Saint-Malo. The diversity of expériences on offer promises you intense and varied moments (to discover the full range of excursions, go to the itinerary tab).

From the port of Leixões, you will visit Porto. The capital of Portugal’s northern region, this “city of granite” is renowned for its wine but also for its remarkable historic centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Your journey will continue to Galicia and the city of Vigo, the biggest fishing port in Spain. Not far from here, Santiago de Compostela awaits you. This unmissable pilgrimage destination is home to a number of monuments from the Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque periods, testimony to its illustrious past.

L’Austral will then head for the capital of the Spanish Basque Country, Bilbao. Between daring architecture and the continuation of its ancestral traditions, you will be able to witness the city’s unique energy.

After a special moment in the wine capital of the world, Bordeaux, you visit the beautiful fortified town of Talmont-sur-Gironde before saluting the Cordouan lighthouse, a guardian of light designed to guide sailors at the entrance to the Gironde estuary.

Belle-Île-en-Mer, to the south of Brittany, will be one of the key ports of call on this stimulating voyage. The Impressionist painter Claude Monet lived for a while in the village of Kervilahouen on this island. 

During your stop in Saint-Malo, a town famous for the legendary Route du Rhum yacht race, lose yourself in the diversity of its heritage, stroll along its rampart and fall under the charm of the city of privateers. 

After stopping off in Guernsey, you head for the pretty Normandy port of Honfleur, where you disembark.