Nobody eats tapas sitting down. Not the first round, anyway.
Which Barcelona crawl actually stops at four bars. What a San Sebastián pintxos hop costs before the wine. Whether the flamenco dinner is worth the seat. Reviews of every tapas tour, tasting and cooking class you can book.
Barcelona, Madrid, San Sebastián, Seville: the four counters to book first.
Where a first tapas trip actually begins. What each evening costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The Barcelona eveningBarcelona Tapas and Wine Experience Small-Group Walking TourSix or seven stops through the Gothic Quarter with a glass poured at each. The night that teaches you the order things get eaten in.
02The Madrid crawlMadrid Tapas & Wine Tasting Walking Tour – Small Group Local BarsSmall group, local bars, and a guide who orders for the table. Vermouth first, then whatever the bar is famous for.
03The Basque counterSan Sebastian Old Town Pintxos & Wine Tour Small Group TourSan Sebastián does it standing up: one pintxo and one txakoli per bar, then move on. Take the small group.
04The Seville roundSevilla Food Tour: Tapas, Wine, History & TraditionsSmall plates with two thousand years of city attached. Late start, longer night, orange trees on the way home.
Barcelona serves four different kinds of tapas night. Pick one.
The densest tapas city on the site. A wine-led crawl, an old-town round after dark, a walking tour with the city attached, or an afternoon learning to cook the rice. What it costs to join each.
Six cities where the tapas hour is the reason to be there.
A Gothic-quarter crawl, a round of tiled Madrid taverns, Andalusian counters that open at half nine, a Basque bar top under skewers, Valencian rice country and the sweet-wine barrels of Málaga. Six starting points, and the best night out in each.
Tapas is a wine order with food attached.
Most of the tours here pour as they go: rioja with the jamón, txakoli with the anchovy, a sweet Málaga at the last stop. The three most taken, and the lists behind them.
The tapas tours more travellers book than any other.
All the tapas tours →What fills up first, from a seventeen-dollar pintxo walk to a full day at a Catalan winery, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Montserrat Half-Day Tour with Tapas and Gourmet Wines
Review of the Montserrat half-day tour from Barcelona, with monastery sights, mountain views, optional winery visits, tapas, and wine tasting.
From · $55
Read our review →
2
Montserrat & Cogwheel Train, Gourmet Wine Tasting & Tapas/Lunch
from $81
3
Barcelona Tapas and Wine Experience Small-Group Walking Tour
from $83
4
Montserrat with Black Madonna & Medieval Winery with Tapas/Lunch
from $65
5
Montserrat and Winery Tour with Tapas or Lunch
from $61
6
Tapas Walking Tour with Food, Wine, and History
from $78
7
Madrid Tapas & Wine Tasting Walking Tour – Small Group Local Bars
from $93
8
Sevilla Food Tour: Tapas, Wine, History & Traditions
from $83
What a tapas night actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. A fair number of the best evenings come in under the cost of the sit-down dinner you would have had instead.
A pintxo and a drink, single-bar tastings, and the short old-town rounds before the kitchens fill.
The standard evening: four to six bars, a glass at each, and a guide doing the ordering.
Private guides, chef tables, winery days out and the tasting menus that earn the fuss.
Spain eats at ten, and the best tapas bars are shut on Monday.
Two facts decide a tapas booking. Kitchens do not really start until nine, so an evening tour that begins at six is feeding you early for your convenience and nobody else’s. And a great many of the bars worth walking to close on Sunday night and all day Monday. The answer is to move the meal instead of the trip: a market morning, a class at midday, vermouth at one, and the counter after nine.
Three things that only happen at a Spanish counter.
Small plates are on every menu in the world now. A bar top buried under skewers, a guitar two feet from your table, and a fortified glass at one in the afternoon are not.
The Pintxos Bar
In San Sebastián and Bilbao the food is already made and sitting on the bar under a skewer. You take what you want, you keep the sticks, you tell the barman how many at the end, and you have exactly one drink before moving on. Nobody sits down. A tour here is really a route through six bars, each of which is famous for one single thing.
- 1San Sebastian Old Town Pintxos & Wine Tour Small Group Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,102 reviews
- 2San Sebastian Pintxo Food, Wine & Market Foodie Tour(Small Group)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 621 reviews
- 3Discover San Sebastián’s Best Pintxos on a Unique Culinary Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 602 reviews
Tapas and Flamenco
A tablao is not a theatre. The stage is a low wooden platform, the dancer is close enough that you feel the floor through your chair, and the whole thing runs about an hour. Tapas either comes beforehand at a table or arrives with the drink during it, and the difference decides where you sit: dinner shows seat you earlier and further back.
- 1Authentic Flamenco Show with Tapas & Wine Guided Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,476 reviews
- 2Tapas and Flamenco Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 1,433 reviews
- 3Flamenco Show at Tablao El Arenal with Drink and Optional Dinner or Tapas★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,415 reviews
La Hora del Vermut
Before Sunday lunch half of Spain drinks sweet red vermouth over ice with an olive in it, and eats tinned mussels and crisps alongside. The bars that do it properly still pour from the barrel. It is the cheapest, earliest and least crowded tapas hour of the week, and almost nobody books it.
- 1Barcelona Old Town Tapas Tour: Vermouth, Bites & Hidden Gems★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 627 reviews
- 2Barcelona Old Town Tapas Night: Hidden Bars, Cava & Vermut★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 454 reviews
- 3Madrid Food Walking Tour with Tapas and Vermouth★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 167 reviews
Madrid has the oldest bars in Spain and drinks standing up in all of them.
No coast, no queue worth joining, so the evening is the attraction. Vermouth in La Latina, a tiled tavern off Cava Baja, and a tortilla argument that has been running for ninety years.
Seville will not start dinner until you have given up waiting for it.
The tapas hour down here begins around half nine and the good bars have no tables at all. You order at the counter, you eat standing, you pay at the end. Málaga adds sweet wine from the barrel; Granada still hands you a free plate with the drink.
Every Andalusian tapas night →
Four tapas bookings that will not wait.
Most of a tapas trip can be arranged from the bar you are already standing in. These four run on group sizes, show times and a shopping list somebody has to go out and buy.
- 01San Sebastian Old Town Pintxos & Wine Tour Small Group TourBasque bar hops run eight to ten people, because that is all that fits along a counter. Weekend slots go weeks out.
- 02Authentic Flamenco Show with Tapas & Wine Guided TourTablaos sell by show time and the front rows are the entire point. The late show goes first.
- 03Barcelona Paella Cooking Class with Market Visit, Tapas & SangriaThe class buys your share at the market that morning, so bookings usually close the day before.
- 04Montserrat Half-Day Tour with Tapas and Gourmet WinesThe mountain runs on a cogwheel train timetable and the winery below it takes one group a day.
By city — Spain, Portugal and further out
The latest tapas tours to get a review.
See the other new ones →
Wine Tasting and Tapas in the ancient Town of Zaragoza
Read our review →
Evening traditional tapas walking tour in old Zaragoza center
Read our review →
City of Arts & Sciences Tour with Rooftop Tapas & Wine
Read our review →
The Seville Market & Tapas Tour by Food Lover Tour
Read our review →
Seville Vegan Tapas Food and Market Walking Tour
Read our review →
Seville Off the Beaten Path Tapas and Market Tour
Read our review →
Private 6 Bridges Cruise with Tapas and Port Wine
Read our review →