A Journey of Taste, Meaning & Renewal
Twenty years ago, Eat, Love, Pray - a memoir about a woman eating her way through Italy, finding herself in India and falling in love in Bali - rewired how a generation of women thought about travel. In 2026, we're marking that anniversary not with nostalgia, but with something considerably better: an eleven-day private jet journey through San Sebastián, Marrakech and the Peloponnese, curated entirely around female leadership, sensory joy and genuine restoration.
This is not a wellness retreat with a bit of sightseeing bolted on. Nor is it a food tour that happens to have nice hotels. It is a deliberately sequenced journey that opens with culinary exhilaration in one of Europe’s most celebrated eating cities, deepens into cultural immersion and meaning in Morocco, and closes with unhurried, spa-soaked restoration.
Female leadership runs through every element — the chefs, the winemakers, the artisans, the retreat founder, your hosts — as a thread that lends the whole experience coherence and genuine depth. You’ll travel with a group of like-minded women, connect when you want to, retreat when you don’t, and arrive home feeling genuinely transformed.
Your trip gallery
Your Hosts
Your Club Avandra private aircraft is not merely transport — it is the connective thread of the entire experience, an intimate space where the group gathers between chapters, where conversations begun over pintxos in the Basque Country are continued at altitude somewhere over the Mediterranean. And, of course, it takes private group travel to a whole new level.
On the ground, your access goes considerably further than most tours would dare – or indeed be able to. In Rioja Alta, a privately arranged afternoon at a women-led winery takes you beyond the tasting room and into the vineyard itself, with a long lunch among the vines and the kind of unhurried conversation with the makers that no public visit replicates. In Marrakech, a curated visit to a women-led artisan cooperative is arranged with genuine intimacy — small group, real stories, the chance to understand the craft and the woman behind it rather than simply admire the product.
At Euphoria Retreat, a private meeting with the founder herself brings the retreat’s guiding philosophy to life in a way that no spa menu ever could. These are not add-ons. They are the point.
Hotels
Down Hall, Hertfordshire — Your opening night is spent at this magnificent country house hotel near London Stansted, a beautiful Italianate mansion set in 110 acres of Essex countryside. It sets the tone immediately: grand but not stiff, elegant but genuinely welcoming. The perfect place to meet your fellow travellers over dinner before the adventure begins properly in the morning.
Hotel María Cristina, San Sebastián — A Belle Époque grande dame at the very heart of the city, positioned between the river and the Old Town. La Concha beach is a ten-minute walk. (The pintxos bars are closer!).
La Mamounia, Marrakech — Quite simply one of the great hotels of the world. Winston Churchill painted here. The gardens are legendary, and the interiors are a masterwork of Moroccan craftsmanship. It sits just inside the old city walls, close enough to the medina for effortless independence, serene enough to feel entirely removed from it. For a women-only group, it is close to ideal: glamorous, safe, and possessed of a spa that you’ll have to drag yourself away from.
Euphoria Retreat, Peloponnese — Tucked into the hillside above the medieval town of Mystras, Euphoria is one of Europe’s finest destination spa retreats. Byzantine-inspired architecture, spring water pools, and a treatment philosophy rooted in both ancient Greek and Chinese healing traditions.
Exclusive Avandra Access
Your Club Avandra private aircraft is not merely transport — it is the connective thread of the entire experience, an intimate space where the group gathers between chapters, where conversations begun over pintxos in the Basque Country are continued at altitude somewhere over the Mediterranean. And, of course, it takes private group travel to a whole new level.
On the ground, your access goes considerably further than most tours would dare – or indeed be able to. In Rioja Alta, a privately arranged afternoon at a women-led winery takes you beyond the tasting room and into the vineyard itself, with a long lunch among the vines and the kind of unhurried conversation with the makers that no public visit replicates. In Marrakech, a curated visit to a women-led artisan cooperative is arranged with genuine intimacy — small group, real stories, the chance to understand the craft and the woman behind it rather than simply admire the product.
At Euphoria Retreat, a private meeting with the founder herself brings the retreat’s guiding philosophy to life in a way that no spa menu ever could. These are not add-ons. They are the point.
Your itinerary
Today’s highlights
- Welcome drinks and private dinner at Down Hall
- Meet your fellow travellers and your Club Avandra host
- Overnight near London Stansted ahead of your early departure
Your journey begins not at an airport — perish the thought — but at Down Hall, a magnificent country house hotel set in the Essex countryside, a short drive from Stansted. This first evening has been designed with one purpose: to take a group of women who may not yet know each other and, by the time dessert arrives, make them feel as though they’ve been friends for years.
Your Club Avandra host will be there to welcome you, make introductions, run through the journey ahead, and ensure that the wine is properly poured. Dinner is private, unhurried, and sets the tone for everything that follows.
Today’s highlights
- Board your private Club Avandra aircraft at Stansted
- Arrive into San Sebastián; check in to Hotel María Cristina
- Guided Old Town pintxos and wine walking tour
- Dinner in the city
This morning, you board your private Embraer at Stansted — a custom-configured aircraft with 30 seats sold to 20, which means every single passenger has a window seat. (This detail matters more than it sounds!)
San Sebastián reveals itself gradually and then all at once. Check in to the María Cristina — take a moment, take in the room, take a walk along La Concha if the afternoon allows — and then the city really begins. This evening, your guide leads the group through the Old Town’s extraordinary pintxos culture: not a tourist bar crawl, but a curated, conversational, deeply pleasurable education in what Basque food actually means and why the rest of the world has spent decades trying to replicate it. You will eat standing up, you will drink txakoli, and you will not want it to end.
Today’s highlights
- Day trip to Bilbao by private transfer
- Visit to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
- Basque lunch in the city
- Return to San Sebastián; evening at leisure
Bilbao is 45 minutes from San Sebastián and feels, in the best possible way, like an entirely different country. Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim — all titanium curves and structural audacity — remains one of the most thrilling pieces of architecture completed in the last thirty years, and the collection inside more than justifies the exterior’s promises.
Your group has the morning to explore at its own pace, which is always the right pace for a museum of this scale. Lunch follows at a restaurant that takes its Basque credentials as seriously as the city deserves, before a leisurely return to San Sebastián. The evening is yours — whether that means an early night, a final glass of wine on the boulevard, or a return to that pintxos bar from yesterday that you haven’t quite been able to stop thinking about.
Today’s highlights
- Private visit to a women-led Rioja Alta winery
- Long vineyard lunch with paired wines
- Dinner at Arzak — one of Spain’s most celebrated restaurants
If Day Two was about understanding Basque food at street level, Day Four elevates the entire conversation. This morning, private transfers take the group into Rioja Alta for an exclusive visit to a women-led winery — an afternoon that goes far beyond a standard tasting. You’ll meet the makers, walk the vines, understand the philosophy behind the labels, and sit down to a long, beautifully paired lunch.
Back in San Sebastián, the evening belongs to Arzak. Three Michelin stars, a decades-long reputation as one of the great Spanish restaurants, and — crucially for this trip — a story of female culinary leadership that adds genuine dimension to an already iconic meal. Elena Arzak has helmed the kitchen alongside her father and continues the family’s extraordinary legacy. Dinner here is not simply excellent food. It is a conversation about what female excellence in a professional kitchen actually looks like.
Today’s highlights
- Fly San Sebastián to Marrakech on your private aircraft
- Check in to La Mamounia
- Welcome dinner in the gardens
The aircraft departs San Sebastián mid-morning, and by early afternoon, everything has changed: the light, the temperature, the smell of the air. Marrakech does not ease you in gently. It arrives all at once, vivid and specific, and La Mamounia — your base for the next three nights — provides the perfect counterpoint: an oasis of calm and extraordinary beauty just inside the old city walls.
Check in, allow yourself time in the gardens and absorb the fact that you are now in Morocco, and let the afternoon find its own rhythm. This evening, your host brings the group together for a welcome dinner — perhaps in the gardens, perhaps in one of the hotel’s magnificent dining rooms — to mark the transition from Spain to Morocco and from the culinary chapter to the cultural one.
Today’s highlights
- Private visit to a women-led artisan cooperative
- Optional afternoon in the souks
- Dinner at Al Fassia, Marrakech’s legendary all-female restaurant
This morning’s visit is, for many guests, the emotional heart of the entire journey. Your group is welcomed by a women-led artisan cooperative — a place where craft is livelihood, where female entrepreneurship is changing futures, and where the work on the walls and shelves carries real human meaning. This is not a shop. It is a story, told by the women who are living it.
The afternoon is yours. The souks, if you want them — your host can point you towards the right guide, the right quarter, and the right moment to simply wander. Or La Mamounia’s pool and spa. You decide!
This evening, Al Fassia. Entirely female-run, deeply rooted in traditional Moroccan cooking, and possessed of a warmth that makes it feel less like a restaurant booking and more like being welcomed into someone’s home. The bastilla is legendary. The lamb is better still.
Today’s highlights
- A fully flexible day in Marrakech — choose your own adventure
- Options include: Majorelle Gardens, Atlas Mountains day trip, desert Palmeraie, guided souk exploration, or spa time at La Mamounia
- Evening at Dar Essalam for a traditional Moroccan dinner
Today, the itinerary steps back and lets you step forward. Marrakech is a city that rewards personal curiosity, and your Club Avandra host will have spent the preceding days understanding exactly what each guest wants from this free day, with recommendations and arrangements quietly made.
The Majorelle Gardens — Yves Saint Laurent’s extraordinary blue-walled botanical sanctuary — offer morning beauty and relative calm before the city wakes fully. The Atlas Mountains, an hour from the city, offer something altogether wilder: Berber villages, extraordinary mountain light, and the particular pleasure of altitude. The Palmeraie desert experience brings a different kind of silence. The souks, with the right guide, are endlessly rewarding. And La Mamounia’s spa, frankly, could justify a day of its own.
This evening, the group reconvenes at Dar Essalam — a palatial riad in the medina, one of Marrakech’s great traditional restaurants — for a dinner that brings the Moroccan chapter to a proper, unhurried close.
Today’s highlights
- Fly Marrakech to Kalamata, Greece, on your private aircraft
- Arrive Euphoria Retreat, Peloponnese; check in and settle in
- Welcome dinner at the retreat
The aircraft leaves Marrakech in the morning, crosses the Mediterranean, and lands at Kalamata on the southern tip of the Peloponnese.
Euphoria Retreat sits above the medieval town of Mystras, among pine trees and spring water and a silence that is not empty but full. The architecture is Byzantine in influence, the interiors are serene, and the pools — fed by natural springs — are the kind of thing you will spend the next year telling people about. Check in, unpack properly for the first time in days, and allow the pace to shift.
Dinner this evening is at the retreat — nourishing, beautifully prepared, and served with the kind of unhurried care that signals, very clearly, that the restoration chapter has begun.
Today’s highlights
- Full dedicated spa day at Euphoria Retreat
- Signature treatments, thermal pools, optional mindfulness and movement sessions
- Private meeting with Euphoria Retreat’s founder
- Group dinner at the retreat
There is an art to properly doing nothing, and Euphoria has refined it into something close to perfection. Today is entirely devoted to restoration: signature treatments in the spa, time in the thermal pools, optional yoga or mindfulness sessions for those who want gentle structure, and long, unscheduled hours for those who simply want to read, float, and exhale.
The standout moment is a private meeting with Euphoria’s founder — the woman whose vision, philosophy and sheer determination created this extraordinary place. It is a conversation that tends to stay with guests long after they’ve left: about wellness done with genuine integrity, about female leadership in the hospitality industry, and about what it means to build something that genuinely nourishes the people who come to it.
Dinner this evening is the group at its most relaxed, most connected, most itself.
Today’s highlights
- Optional day trip to Athens — the Acropolis, café culture, a beautiful lunch
- Alternatively: further spa time, rest, and reflection at Euphoria
- Farewell dinner this evening — the night the strangers became friends
For some, the call of Athens is irresistible: the Acropolis in the morning light, a café table in Monastiraki, a proper Greek lunch, the particular pleasure of a city that has been getting on with things for several thousand years and shows no signs of stopping. For others, the thought of leaving Euphoria for a city — any city — feels faintly absurd. Both are entirely correct responses, and both are catered for.
This evening, whatever you chose to do with the day, the group comes together for a farewell dinner. These evenings, in our experience, tend to be both the quietest and the most memorable of the trip: the conversation slower, the laughter more comfortable, the recognition that something genuinely significant has happened over the past eleven days.
Today’s highlights
- Final breakfast at Euphoria
- Private transfer to Kalamata Airport
- Fly Kalamata to London Stansted on your Club Avandra aircraft
- Onward connections from Stansted
Breakfast at Euphoria, unhurried. A final coffee in the gardens, or a final twenty minutes in the thermal pool. Private transfers to Kalamata, where your aircraft is waiting.
The flight home is, in our experience, one of the most enjoyable of any journey we operate. Eleven days of shared experience, remarkable places and genuine connection produces, by Day Eleven, a very particular kind of conversation: easy, warm, and full of “do you remember when.” Your crew will look after you all the way home. Your only responsibility is to start thinking about when you’re doing this again.
Need to know
TRIP INCLUDES:
- Private Club Avandra Embraer aircraft throughout (Stansted → San Sebastián → Marrakech → Kalamata → Stansted), with every guest guaranteed a window seat
- All accommodation as described: Down Hall, Hotel María Cristina, La Mamounia, Euphoria Retreat
- All meals as featured in the itinerary, including Arzak, Al Fassia and Dar Essalam dinners
- All hosted excursions and exclusive access experiences: winery visit and vineyard lunch, women-led cooperative visit, Guggenheim day trip, Euphoria spa day and founder meeting
- Private transfers throughout
- Onboard refreshments, open bar and tailored in-flight service
- Dedicated Club Avandra host for the full eleven days
- Gratuities for included services
TRIP EXCLUDES:
- Flights to/from London Stansted (for those outside the London area)
- Travel insurance (required; your Club Avandra team can advise)
- Personal spa treatments beyond the dedicated Euphoria spa day
- Optional Athens day trip expenses (entrance fees, meals, personal shopping)
- Personal shopping, souvenirs and individual purchases throughout
- Visa fees where applicable
- Any experiences or meals not specified in the itinerary
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Speak to one of our specialist travel partners to create your perfect experience.
This trip is operated by Travel Seen. Itineraries subject to change and standard check in times apply. Please refer to full T&C’s here.