10-Day Turkey Tour: Istanbul, Ephesus, Pamukkale, Antalya, Cappadocia

Transfers included

Our airport team meets you at Istanbul Airport (IST) or Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW), using the flight details you sent us. A driver then takes you to your Istanbul hotel, where you check in and recover from the journey.

Night in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast. Transfers included.

At 08:30 we collect you from your hotel and drive to Sultanahmet, the historic peninsula of the city. The guided walk through the old town starts at 09:00.

• Hagia Sophia: completed in 537 AD, it has served as a cathedral, then an Ottoman mosque, and today as an active place of worship, so one building holds more than fifteen centuries of religious and architectural history. Look up at the huge dome and the golden mosaics, one of the most striking interiors anywhere.
• Blue Mosque: it faces Hagia Sophia across the square and has six minarets, an unusual number for an imperial Ottoman mosque. Inside, over twenty thousand blue Iznik tiles give the hall a cool, bright feel that contrasts with the scene outside.
• Hippodrome: the civic centre of Byzantine Constantinople, where up to one hundred thousand people watched chariot races. Three ancient monuments remain: the Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpent Column and the Column of Constantine, each brought from a different part of the ancient world.
• Bosphorus Cruise: a short boat trip shows Istanbul as a city on two continents, with waterfront palaces on the European shore and wooded hills on the Asian side in the same view. It pulls together everything you saw on foot.

The tour finishes at 16:00 and you are driven back to your hotel. Night in Istanbul.

Meals: lunch. Transfers included.

Hotel pick-up is at 05:00 for the drive to the airport in Istanbul. Your flight to Izmir leaves at 07:00 and lands at Izmir Airport at 08:10. Flight times can change, and the arrival airport and time depend on availability. From the airport you go straight to Ephesus Ancient City.

• Ephesus Ancient City: one of the most complete ancient cities ever excavated, with marble streets, carved facades and monuments that have stood for two thousand years. The two-storey columns of the Library of Celsus rise at the end of Curetes Street and leave most first-time visitors amazed. Few Roman sites anywhere offer this scale and detail in a single visit.
• House of Virgin Mary: on Bulbul Mountain stands the small stone house where Mary is believed to have lived. It was found again in the 19th century after a German nun had a vision, and pilgrims have climbed up here ever since. Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis have all visited, and the site is honoured in both Catholic and Orthodox traditions. At the altar, that long devotion feels very real.
• Temple of Artemis: Roman-era coins struck in Ephesus carried the temple on their face, a sign of how central it was to the city's identity and economy. Worshippers came from all over the Mediterranean, and the complex held treasuries, altars and lodging for visitors on a scale that rivals modern religious sites. Today one column near Selcuk marks the spot.

The Ephesus tour ends at 16:00, followed by a transfer to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk. Night in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers included.

At 08:00 you have breakfast, check out and set off for the day's program.

• Pamukkale: in Denizli province in southwestern Turkey, on the spot where the Romans once built a whole spa city. Calcium-rich thermal springs have shaped the white hillside over thousands of years, and visitors come from every part of the world to see the terraces up close.
• White Calcium Terraces: water that has travelled underground for thousands of years comes out warm and full of minerals. As it runs over the wide ledges and cools, calcium carbonate settles out and slowly builds the white travertine. You walk on the same terraces the Romans knew, now with two thousand more years of deposits on top.
• Hierapolis Ancient City: the necropolis spreads over two kilometres of hillside and shows tombs from several eras: simple Hellenistic pit graves, carved and inscribed Roman sarcophagi and later Byzantine barrel-vaulted tombs. Together they tell the story of a city that lived and changed above Pamukkale for more than a thousand years.
• Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool: part of the Hierapolis archaeological area. Entering the pool area is free; a swim is optional and paid on site. If you decide to go in, you share warm mineral water with sunken Roman columns.

The Pamukkale tour ends at 16:00 and you are taken to the bus station. Your bus to Antalya departs at 17:30 and reaches Antalya Bus Station at 21:00, where we meet you and drive you to your hotel. Night in Antalya.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers included.

After breakfast at the hotel, our staff collect you at 08:00. You drive to the first site and meet your guide there.

• Perge Ancient City: one of the wealthiest cities of ancient Pamphylia. It feels different from Ephesus: wider streets, bigger thermal baths and a more open, sunny setting with the Taurus Mountains behind. Its colonnaded main avenue is among the best preserved in Turkey.
• Aspendos Ancient City: the theatre here is the best-preserved Roman theatre in the world that still hosts performances, with its upper tiers and stage building standing almost to their full original height. The stonework and acoustics make it a moving stop, far more than a ruin for photos.
• Side Ancient City: a small peninsula where temples, colonnaded streets and harbour ruins all lie within an easy walk of each other. The sea air and the layers of history make it feel livelier than the bigger inland sites.
• Kursunlu Waterfall: water drops through a wooded gorge into a clear pool, a natural contrast to a day of ancient stone. A short walk under shady trees leads there, a welcome break before the evening drive back to Antalya.

At 17:00 you transfer back to your hotel in Antalya. Night in Antalya.

Meals: breakfast. Free time all day.

The day is yours to spend as you like. A few ideas: walk through Kaleici old town and down to its harbour, relax on Konyaalti or Lara beach, or visit the Duden waterfalls.

Night in Antalya.

Meals: breakfast. Transfers included.

At 05:30 we pick you up from your hotel and drive you to the airport for the flight from Antalya to Cappadocia. If no direct flight is available, we book a connecting flight via Istanbul. Flight times can change, and the arrival airport and time depend on availability.

After you land at Cappadocia Airport, our team meets you and drives you to your hotel. Night in Cappadocia.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers included.

Optional early-morning add-ons, both bookable at the best available price when you reserve:

• Hot Air Balloon Flight: the top-rated Cappadocia experience and our most booked activity, with famous sunrise views.
• Balloon Watching Tour: a trip to the best viewpoints in Cappadocia for sunrise photos, with those viewpoints guaranteed.

After breakfast, at 09:30, you are collected and driven to the northern touring area.

• Devrent Valley (Pink Valley): in the early morning the low sun hits each rock column from a different angle, and the plateau looks almost unreal. Bring a wide-angle lens if you have one; the size of the valley deserves it.
• Pasabag Open Air Museum: Cappadocia has hundreds of fairy chimneys, but the ones at Pasabag stand out for their multi-headed tops. Erosion split the basalt cap into separate pieces before wearing away the softer rock below. Single caps are common; three-headed chimneys are rare even here.
• Avanos Pottery Workshop: Avanos pottery has its own local identity beyond tourism. Turkish homes use it for storage, cooking and serving, and this home market gives the workshops an income that does not rely only on visitors.
• Goreme Panoramic View: most travellers arrive with a picture of Cappadocia built from photos and travel articles. Here that picture meets the real landscape, and for most people the real view is clearly better.
• Zelve Open Air Museum: look for the grain mills, an often overlooked feature, with carved millstone tracks and storage channels still visible in the rock. Seeing food production next to churches and homes makes Zelve read as a full working economy, not just a village.
• Uchisar Castle (exterior view): its height and outline made it a landmark for camel caravans crossing the plateau for centuries. Travellers coming from the west knew they had reached Cappadocia once the castle came into sight.

The tour finishes at 17:00 with a transfer to your hotel. Night in Cappadocia.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers included.

At 09:30 you have breakfast, check out and leave for the day's program.

• Red Valley: early Christian settlers used its rock formations as landmarks when moving between cave settlements. Today people come for the scenery, with orange ridges running to the horizon on every side.
• Rose Valley (Gulludere Valley): it lies where the heavier volcanic rock of the Goreme plateau gives way to the softer limestone canyons that run north toward the Avanos basin. The mix of rock types gives a single canyon wall several textures and colours.
• Cavusin Village: a carved cistern near the foot of the old village gathered rainwater led down from the cliff above, solving the water problem for people living in porous volcanic rock. It shows how much planning and engineering went into life on the cliff.
• Pigeon Valley: unlike other canyons here, it is defined not by fairy chimneys or rock churches but by the sheer amount of human work cut into its walls. More than any other Yellow Tour stop, it shows how centuries of farming skill shaped the Cappadocia landscape.
• Underground City: these cities stayed in use through many centuries and many threats, from early Byzantine-era raids to later invasions, and each generation added new rooms. Different building methods in different sections let researchers tell the original chambers from later extensions.

The guided program ends at 17:00 and you are driven to the airport. Your flight to Istanbul leaves at 20:40 and arrives at Istanbul Airport at 21:00. Flight times can change, and the arrival airport and time depend on availability. Our team meets you after landing and takes you to your hotel. Night in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast. Transfers are included.

Check out after breakfast; we then take you in good time to Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW) or Istanbul Airport (IST) for your international flight. With this final transfer, the services of your 10-day Turkey tour come to an end.