Seafood tours in Europe that eat by the harbor

About this category

Where the catch meets the counter

Fish changes faster than any other food between the boat and the plate, and the coasts of southern Europe built whole cuisines around eating it quickly. The tours in this category spend time at fish markets and harbor grills, and they eat seafood the way locals do: simply cooked, shared, and usually with a glass of something from nearby.

Sicily: Palermo Street Food, Modica Chocolate and Etna Wine opens with pasta con le sarde, sardines with wild fennel and pine nuts, at the welcome dinner and walks the Capo market in Palermo for swordfish and capers. On the east coast the group goes through La Pescheria, Catania’s loud morning fish market behind the cathedral, before lunch in town.

The Basque Country is the most seafood-minded tour we run. A San Sebastián class cooks hake kokotxas in salsa verde and a spider crab gratin, a harbor grill in Getaria cooks a whole turbot over charcoal, and in Bilbao a cook shows how salt cod and garlic oil turn into bacalao al pil-pil.

Portugal: Lisbon, Porto and the Douro Valley eats clams with garlic and coriander in an Alfama tasca, grilled sardines from June to September and bacalhau in a riverside tavern in Porto. Athens and Crete starts with grilled octopus below the Acropolis and grilled sardines at a meze lunch in Psyrri, then has dinner by the water at Chania’s Venetian harbor.

Guests who avoid shellfish are easy to look after on all four tours with notice, though the Basque class and harbor lunches take more planning. Wine, txakoli, port and raki with the seafood are poured for guests 18 and over, with a non-alcoholic option at every meal.