Turkey or Greece for Your Holiday? How a First Week Compares

For a first holiday, choose Turkey if you want one week that strings together a great city, a cave landscape and Roman ruins, linked by short domestic flights. Choose Greece if the week is really about islands and you are happy to give a whole day to a ferry. Both are visa-free for most Western passports, and both work well for a first trip abroad. The real difference is the shape of the week. Our Istanbul, Cappadocia, Pamukkale and Ephesus tour, seven days from $1,286 per person with three domestic flights, shows what a first week in Turkey looks like.

We already compare prices, beaches and seasons in our Turkey vs Greece vacation guide. This page takes a different route: it plans the same first week in both countries and looks at what changes on the ground, from border checks and ticket prices to the hours you spend in transit.

Which first week suits you

• Turkey suits you if you want variety: Istanbul's mosques and bazaars, Cappadocia's valleys, the Pamukkale terraces and Ephesus in one week. Its headline sights are cities and inland valleys rather than beaches, so it also works outside summer. And because Turkey is not in the Schengen area, days spent there do not use up your Schengen allowance.
• Greece suits you if the picture in your head is a white village above the sea. The islands are the point of the trip, and the Acropolis is an easy add-on at the start or the end.
• Both suit you if you have nine days or more. Istanbul and Athens are a short nonstop flight apart, and several short sea crossings link the Turkish coast with Greek islands.

A first week in each country, side by side

The table compares our seven-day Turkey route with a typical first week in Greece built around Athens and Santorini, the same pairing used on the Greek half of our 9-day Turkey and Greece tour.

The Turkish week moves often, but each move is short. Pegasus Airlines' own pages give the flight from Istanbul to Kayseri, one of the two airports that serve Cappadocia, as 1 hour 15 to 1 hour 25 minutes. The price of seeing four regions in seven days is a couple of early or late travel days. On our route the Cappadocia flight leaves at about 06:40, and because direct flights from Cappadocia to Izmir do not run every day, the evening connection through Istanbul lands at about 23:45.

The Greek week moves less, but the ferry is a big one. The Greek Travel Pages timetable for Piraeus to Santorini shows Blue Star Ferries crossings of 5 hours 40 minutes to 8 hours 45 minutes this winter, and up to 11 hours 50 minutes on the slower Fast Ferries boat. In the 2027 summer timetable, Seajets catamarans cut the trip to between 4 hours 25 minutes and 5 hours 40 minutes. The flight between Athens and Santorini takes under an hour, and our Turkey and Greece tour uses both: it sails out and flies back.

Entry rules in 2026: what happens at each border

Turkey. Turkey's Ministry of Foreign Affairs lists ordinary passport holders from the UK, the US, Canada and Ireland as visa-exempt for up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and Australians as visa-exempt for tourist visits. German, French and New Zealand passport holders can stay up to 90 days without a visa, and Chinese citizens have been visa-exempt since 2 January 2026. Indian passport holders still need a visa. Your passport must be valid for at least 60 days beyond the end of your permitted stay; the UK government puts it simply as 150 days after the date you arrive. Our Turkey visa requirements update covers more nationalities.

Greece. Greece is in the Schengen area, so visa-free visitors can stay up to 90 days in any 180-day period across all Schengen countries combined. The EU's Entry/Exit System (EES) started on 12 October 2025 and, according to the European Commission, became fully operational on 10 April 2026. It records the passport details, fingerprints and a facial image of non-EU visitors on short stays, with the date and place of each entry and exit; children aged 11 or younger are not fingerprinted. The UK government's travel advice says Greek authorities have indicated that they will not collect fingerprints and photos from UK travellers under the EES, and tells travellers to follow the advice of the officers on the spot. British passports must also have been issued less than 10 years before the day you arrive and stay valid for at least 3 months after the day you leave the Schengen area.

The EU's planned ETIAS travel authorisation is not in operation yet. The European Commission says it will announce the start date several months in advance, so check the EU's official travel site before you fly.

What the big sights cost to get in

Both countries price their headline sites in euros for foreign visitors. Greece raised the Acropolis to €30 in April 2025 and dropped the old winter discount, so one price now applies all year; sites with more than 200,000 visitors a year sit in a €20 band. In Turkey, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism published a new tariff in September 2026, and most foreign-visitor prices rise on 1 April 2027.

On our seven-day route the entrance fees for the sites in its itinerary are included in the tour price, so you pay these Turkish prices yourself only for sites you add or when you travel independently. On the Greek side, budget the Acropolis alone at €30 per adult. Our Turkey museum prices update lists the full 2027 table.

Getting around: flights against ferries

Turkey is a big country, so a first week is built on domestic flights, with road transfers for Pamukkale and Ephesus. On our seven-day route the three flights include a 15 kg checked bag and 8 kg of cabin baggage, which is worth knowing before you pack for a week.

Greece is built on ferries. The season changes the choice: in the Greek Travel Pages timetable for November to February, only Blue Star Ferries and Fast Ferries sail from Piraeus to Santorini, while the Seajets catamarans run from April. Check the crossing time before you book your island hotel, so that a slow sailing does not eat a night you have already paid for.

If the sea is what draws you to the Greek week, the Turkish week can end on the water instead. On the 7-day Best of Turkey tour with a Fethiye gulet cruise, Cappadocia, Ephesus and Pamukkale come first, and the last three days are a 3-day, 2-night cruise on a gulet, a traditional wooden boat, from Fethiye past Butterfly Valley and Ölüdeniz to the Sunken City near Kekova. Our blue cruise tours list other gulet trips.

Food on a first trip

In Turkey the meal first-timers remember is breakfast. The word kahvaltı means "before coffee", and a typical table holds white cheese and kashar, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, honey, kaymak cream, jam and eggs, often menemen cooked with tomatoes and peppers, with Turkish tea refilled throughout. During the day you eat on the move: simit bread rings, fish sandwiches by the water and baklava, all covered in our Istanbul street food guide. Coffee comes after the meal, not with it, as our guide to Turkish coffee and tea explains.

In Greece the centre of a first trip is the taverna: shared small plates, grilled fish and meat, salads and bread. Many dishes will look familiar once you have been to Turkey, because the two kitchens share a long history: stuffed vegetables, filo pastries, yoghurt dishes and coffee boiled in a small long-handled pot.

Vegetarians do well in both countries, since so much of the table is vegetables, cheese, pulses and bread. Our page on an Istanbul vegetarian food tour lists the meat-free Turkish dishes worth ordering.

Beaches: a resort coast or island beaches

Both countries have far more good beaches than one holiday can use. In the 2026 Blue Flag awards, Greece had 624 awarded beaches and ranked second in the world among 51 participating countries. Turkey had 580 and ranked third, behind Spain and Greece.

The difference is where the beaches are. Turkey's are mostly on the mainland: Antalya province alone has 232 Blue Flag beaches, Muğla, the province of Bodrum and Fethiye, has 113, and İzmir has 60. That makes it easy to mix sea days with sightseeing in the same week. Greece's beaches are spread across its islands and the mainland coast, led by the Region of Crete with 154 and Halkidiki with 93, so a Greek beach week often means choosing one island and staying put.

For a Turkish week that ends on the sand, see our Turkey tour and beach holiday ideas, or the Ölüdeniz lagoon near Fethiye.

The honest downsides

Greece. The best-known islands get very busy in summer, and Greece now charges a fee for each cruise passenger whose ship calls there. Since 21 July 2025, the fee at Mykonos and Santorini has been €20 per passenger from June to September, €12 in April, May and October and €4 from November to March; other Greek ports charge €5, €3 and €1. It applies only to cruise passengers, but it is a sign of how much pressure those two islands are under. Ferry days can also be long, and winter timetables are thinner.

Turkey. The distances are real, so a varied week means early starts and evening flights. Prices for foreign visitors keep rising, with Ephesus going from €40 to €45 in April 2027. Hagia Sophia and the other Sultanahmet sights are busy for most of the day, and the mosques close to visitors for a short time at each of the five daily prayers, so a guided day is planned around them.

Doing both in one trip

With nine days or more, you do not have to choose. Turkish Airlines and Aegean Airlines fly nonstop between Istanbul and Athens in about an hour and a half, and short ferries cross from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands, with fewer sailings outside summer. Each crossing takes you through a Schengen border, so the EES rules above apply on the Greek side.

Our 9-day Turkey and Greece tour spends two nights each in Istanbul, Cappadocia, Athens and Santorini. It flies from Kayseri to Athens via Istanbul, takes the ferry from Piraeus to Santorini and flies back to Athens on the last day. Our Greece and Turkey tour guide covers which country to start in and where to cross, and the Samos to Ephesus day trip page plans a day at Ephesus from the Greek island of Samos.

Tours that cover this

• Istanbul, Cappadocia, Pamukkale and Ephesus Tour: 7 Days with Flights: from $1,286 per person. A group tour with three domestic flights, six hotel nights and the entrance fees in the itinerary.
• Istanbul and Antalya Tour Package: 8 Days with Flight and Suluada: from $1,980 per person. A city and a beach, the Turkish version of an Athens-plus-island week.
• Best of Turkey Tour with Fethiye Gulet Cruise: 7 Days: from $2,865 per person. The classic sights plus days at sea.
• Turkey and Greece Tour Package: 9 Days, Istanbul to Santorini: from $3,165 per person. Both countries in one trip.

If none of these fits, we can build a tailor-made Turkey tour around your dates.

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