Canary Islands Luxury Itinerary: The Perfect 7-Day Guide

Canary Islands Luxury Itinerary: The Perfect 7-Day Guide

Here is what most first-time visitors get wrong about the Canary Islands: they assume it is a single place. They book a week in Tenerife, sun themselves senseless beside a pool in the south, eat reliably mediocre paella at a beachfront restaurant, and fly home satisfied they have “done” the Canaries. They have not. The Canary Islands are seven distinct personalities – volcanic, green, lunar, lush, windswept, cosmopolitan and eerily silent by turns – scattered across the Atlantic off the coast of Morocco. To experience them properly is to accept that you cannot, in a single week, experience them properly. What you can do is choose intelligently, move with purpose, and surrender to the particular rhythm of islands that have been quietly getting on with things since the Pleistocene epoch, long before the first charter flight touched down at Reina Sofía.

This canary islands luxury itinerary: the perfect 7-day guide does not pretend otherwise. What it offers instead is a curated week that moves between the extraordinary and the quietly revelatory – between fire-blackened lava fields and whitewashed colonial squares, between Michelin-starred dining rooms and fish shacks that have no reason to change because they have never needed to. Seven days. Used well, they are more than enough to fall genuinely, inconveniently in love with these islands.

For everything you need to know before you arrive – climate, islands, transfers, what to pack for a landscape that can be tropical jungle and high-altitude desert within the same hour – read our full Canary Islands Travel Guide.

Day 1: Arrival and First Impressions – Gran Canaria

Morning

Fly into Gran Canaria and resist the urge to drive straight south to the resort strip. Instead, head into Las Palmas de Gran Canaria – a proper city with a working port, a thriving food scene, and one of the finest old towns in the Atlantic. Las Palmas has the slightly dishevelled glamour of a city that knows it is good-looking but can’t quite be bothered to dress up for it. Drop your bags, find your bearings, and take a slow walk through Vegueta, the colonial quarter, where the cathedral has been under construction since 1497. Nobody is particularly rushing.

Afternoon

The Casa de Colón – Christopher Columbus’s alleged stopping point on his way to the Americas – deserves an hour of your time. The building itself is the real draw: a confection of carved wooden balconies and cool interior courtyards that would make a reasonable case for itself even if Columbus had never visited. Afterwards, make your way to Las Canteras beach, one of the genuinely great urban beaches of Europe, where a natural reef makes the water unusually calm and local families have been picnicking since long before anyone thought to call it a “destination beach.” Pack a book. This is not the kind of beach that needs improving upon.

Evening

Dinner in the Triana neighbourhood, where the restaurant density increases and the quality follows. Gran Canaria’s food scene has evolved considerably – look for creative Canarian cuisine, which leans on fresh tuna, mojo verde, papas arrugadas and goat’s cheese with a confidence that suggests the island has always known it was sitting on something good. Book ahead for anywhere worth going to. The islands may feel casual, but the best tables fill up with an efficiency that surprises visitors every time.

Day 2: Into the Interior – The Mountains of Gran Canaria

Morning

The great secret of Gran Canaria – and there are several – is that it is essentially a miniature continent. Drive thirty minutes into the interior and the coastal resort landscape falls away entirely, replaced by deep ravines called barrancos, pine forests smelling of resin in the morning heat, and mountain villages so quiet you can hear your own footsteps. Tejeda, in the central massif, is the place to aim for: a handsome village of white and ochre houses arranged around a church, with views across to the extraordinary rock formations of the Roque Nublo and Roque Bentayga. Have coffee here. Take your time about it.

Afternoon

The Roque Nublo – an 80-metre volcanic monolith rising from a plateau at 1,813 metres – is a relatively straightforward walk from the car park, and entirely worth the effort. The view from the top on a clear day takes in the southern coast, Teide on Tenerife shimmering across the water, and what feels like the whole of the Atlantic. There are no queues, no audio guides, no gift shop. This is notable and should be appreciated. On the way back down, stop at a local guanchinery – the traditional Canarian farms that still produce aloe vera, local honey, and the sweet almond biscuits called mazapanes de Tejeda.

Evening

Return to the coast for sunset drinks somewhere with an unobstructed western view, then dinner at a restaurant in the Santa Catalina district of Las Palmas – the city’s most animated quarter, where the evening passeo carries on with the unhurried energy of people who have correctly concluded that there is no particular reason to hurry.

Day 3: Transfer to Lanzarote – Fire and Design

Morning

Fly the short hop to Lanzarote – barely forty minutes, and worth every second once you emerge into an island that looks, in places, like the moon has been coloured in by a particularly bold child. The black lava fields of the Timanfaya National Park cover a third of the island, the result of eruptions between 1730 and 1736 that buried entire villages under rock. The landscape is genuinely otherworldly, and the park guides at the Islote de Hilario – where the ground temperature a metre below the surface is still around 400 degrees – demonstrate this with an almost theatrical pleasure.

Afternoon

César Manrique is to Lanzarote what Gaudí is to Barcelona, except that Manrique had the specific ambition of ensuring his island was never ruined by the tourism it was inevitably going to attract. He largely succeeded. The Fundación César Manrique, built into a lava bubble in his former home at Tahíche, is one of the most extraordinary living spaces you are likely to encounter: five volcanic caves converted into rooms, connected by tunnels, with a swimming pool in a cavern. Whether it is architecture, art or a kind of magnificent eccentricity is not entirely clear. Possibly all three.

Evening

Dinner near Jameos del Agua or in the village of Haría – the “Valley of a Thousand Palms” in the north of the island, where Manrique also lived and where the pace drops to something approaching geological. The food in Lanzarote leans heavily on the sea, and particularly on the wrinkled papas arrugadas with mojo rojo that arrive at every table as a matter of course. Let them.

Day 4: La Graciosa and the Art of Doing Nothing

Morning

Take the short ferry from Órzola in the north of Lanzarote to La Graciosa – a small island of white sand, turquoise water, and approximately 700 permanent residents who have collectively arrived at the correct conclusion about how life should be lived. There are no paved roads on La Graciosa. There is very little to do. This is entirely the point. Hire a bicycle or a 4×4 from the small village of Caleta del Sebo and make your way to Playa de las Conchas on the northern tip – a wide, wild arc of sand facing the open Atlantic, usually almost empty, and genuinely one of the finest beaches in the archipelago.

Afternoon

Swim. Read. Swim again. The water off La Graciosa is the particular shade of blue that appears in photographs and prompts the suspicion that someone has adjusted the saturation. They have not. Return to Caleta del Sebo for lunch at one of the small restaurants along the waterfront – simple fish, caught locally, grilled with confidence. La Graciosa is not trying to impress anyone. This, paradoxically, impresses everyone.

Evening

Return ferry to Órzola before sunset, and drive south along the coast road as the light turns. Lanzarote in the late afternoon, with the volcanic landscape absorbing the gold and copper of sunset, is an experience that requires no embellishment and politely refuses any attempt at one.

Day 5: Transfer to Tenerife – Teide and the North

Morning

Fly to Tenerife and head immediately north, away from the southern resorts and towards the island that most visitors never quite reach. Tenerife’s north is a different country: lush and green, with banana plantations descending to dark sand beaches, colonial towns of considerable elegance, and a coastline that crashes rather than laps. La Orotava, in the Orotava Valley below Teide, is one of the most beautifully preserved Spanish colonial towns in existence, with 17th-century mansions arranged around a church of baroque extravagance that would look at home in the centre of Seville.

Afternoon

Take the cable car to within 200 metres of the summit of Mount Teide – at 3,715 metres, the highest point in Spain and the third largest volcano in the world. Book the cable car in advance and, if you intend to reach the actual summit crater, the summit permit must be reserved weeks ahead. The landscape at this altitude is mineral and silent in equal measure: ochre and rust and pale grey against a sky that at this height takes on a depth of blue that feels slightly unreal. Down at the base of the volcano, the Cañadas del Teide – the ancient caldera – stretches away in every direction like the surface of an abandoned planet.

Evening

Dinner in Puerto de la Cruz, the north’s main town, which has retained considerably more character than its southern counterpart. The restaurant scene here is good and getting better – look for Canarian cuisine with contemporary ambition, where local ingredients are treated with the seriousness they have always deserved. The town fills up in the evenings with locals, which is generally the most reliable indicator available to the travelling public.

Day 6: The Anaga Peninsula – Tenerife’s Hidden Wilderness

Morning

The Anaga Rural Park in the northeast of Tenerife is one of the oldest landscapes in the Canaries and, despite being within forty minutes of Santa Cruz, feels genuinely remote. A UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of laurisilva forest – the ancient laurel forest that once covered much of the Mediterranean basin before the last ice age – Anaga is where Tenerife becomes mysterious. Trails wind through dense forest where the trees drip with moisture and the light arrives in fragments. Hire a guide for the morning: the paths are beautiful and the waymarking is not always what you might hope for.

Afternoon

Descend to one of the small fishing villages on the Anaga coast – Taganana or Almáciga – where the road becomes increasingly optimistic about what a road should be expected to do, and where the beaches below are dark sand and frequently empty. Lunch at a local bar serving whatever was caught that morning. This is not a difficult calculation. In the afternoon, drive along the coast road back towards Santa Cruz or head up into the hills again – the Anaga has a way of making conventional tourist itineraries feel slightly beside the point.

Evening

Santa Cruz de Tenerife for your final evening on the island is a sound decision. The capital is livelier than its modest reputation suggests – a real working city with a good market, a fine contemporary art museum (the TEA, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, which alone justifies a brief detour), and a restaurant scene anchored by serious Canarian cooking. Reserve a table at one of the city’s better restaurants and stay late. Tomorrow is a travel day and this is not a reason to go to bed early.

Day 7: Final Day – La Gomera or Grand Finale on Tenerife

Morning

For those with time and appetite for one more island, the ferry from Los Cristianos in the south of Tenerife reaches La Gomera in thirty-five minutes. La Gomera is compact, circular, and entirely preposterous in its beauty – a corrugated landscape of deep ravines and terraced hillsides rising to the ancient laurel forest of the Garajonay National Park at its centre. The island is also home to Silbo Gomero, a whistled language used by the islanders to communicate across valleys too deep for shouting. It is recognised by UNESCO and is, in every possible sense, a genuinely remarkable thing to encounter.

Afternoon

If La Gomera feels like one island too many after a busy week (a legitimate position – nobody should feel guilty about knowing their limits), spend the afternoon at one of Tenerife’s finer hotel spas or simply find a quiet beach in the north and lie on it with the peaceful conviction of someone who has spent the week rather well. The final afternoon of any luxury itinerary has a particular quality that is worth protecting. Do not waste it on a souvenir shop.

Evening

A final dinner that does justice to the week: seek out somewhere that leads with local produce – Canarian papas, fresh fish from these waters, Malvasia wine from the volcanic soils of Lanzarote, which produces whites of extraordinary minerality. Raise a glass to the Pleistocene epoch, which had the foresight to arrange all of this. Then sleep well, because the Canary Islands have a way of following you home, and you will need the rest to properly contemplate when you are coming back.

Practical Notes for Your Luxury Canary Islands Itinerary

Moving between islands is best done by inter-island flights – Binter Canarias operates frequent connections and booking ahead is advisable during peak season. Ferry routes connect several islands and are worth considering for shorter crossings such as Tenerife to La Gomera or Lanzarote to La Graciosa, where the journey itself is part of the experience. Teide cable car tickets and summit permits sell out weeks in advance – these are not optional bookings for the organised traveller. Restaurant reservations at the better establishments on any island should be made before you arrive, particularly in high season between December and February when the islands are at their most popular with northern Europeans who have correctly assessed the situation with their own weather. The driving throughout the archipelago is straightforward, though the mountain roads of Gran Canaria and the Anaga Peninsula reward a certain philosophical equanimity about blind corners.

The best time to visit depends entirely on which island and what you are after. The southern resorts of Tenerife and Gran Canaria are reliably warm year-round. The north of both islands can be overcast in summer. Lanzarote is drier and sunnier than most. The Canary Islands climate is one of its great selling points and also one of its more complicated truths – microclimates shift dramatically with altitude and aspect, and the island that is sunny at sea level may be in cloud 500 metres up. Pack accordingly.

Base Yourself in a Luxury Villa in the Canary Islands

The single best decision you can make for a week like this one is to base yourself in a luxury villa in Canary Islands – somewhere with a private pool, a kitchen capable of doing justice to the market produce you will inevitably start buying obsessively by day three, and the kind of space that a hotel room, however well-appointed, cannot replicate. Villa living allows you to set your own pace: late breakfasts on a terrace with a view of the Atlantic, evenings that extend as long as you want them to, the particular pleasure of returning at the end of a day’s exploration to somewhere that feels genuinely like yours. Excellence Luxury Villas offers a carefully selected portfolio of properties across the archipelago – from clifftop retreats in Lanzarote to architectural showpieces in the hills above Las Palmas – each chosen with the same attention to detail that this extraordinary set of islands demands. A week is never quite enough. A villa makes it feel, just about, like it might be.