Best of Turkey Tour Package – 16 Days, Gobeklitepe & 3 Flights

Transfers: included.

Our team meets you when you land at Sabiha Gokcen Airport or Istanbul Airport and drives you to your hotel. Nothing else is planned, so the rest of the day is yours.

Overnight in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

08:30 – Pickup at your hotel and drive to the historic Sultanahmet district.

• Blue Mosque: Built to compete with Hagia Sophia on the opposite side of the square, the Sultan Ahmed Mosque was the grandest Ottoman place of worship in the city when it was finished, with six minarets and a cascade of domes. The interior is covered in more than 20,000 blue Iznik tiles, each painted by hand, which explains its popular name.
• Hagia Sophia: For close to a thousand of its nearly 1,500 years, this was the largest cathedral on earth, until 1453, when the Ottomans made it a mosque. Inside, Byzantine mosaics sit beside Ottoman calligraphy medallions under the huge original dome that still shapes the skyline.
• Hippodrome: Chariot races and public shows here once drew 100,000 people, and this was the ceremonial heart of Constantinople. The Serpent Column, the Column of Constantine and the Egyptian Obelisk still mark its ancient spine, and walking the length of the square gives you a sense of the original arena's size.
• Topkapi Palace and Harem: Ottoman sultans governed their empire from here for almost four hundred years. Four courtyards hold sacred relics, treasury rooms and the harem quarters where the dynasty lived its private life, and the terrace over the Golden Horn offers one of the best views in Istanbul.
• Grand Bazaar: Trading since 1461, this is among the oldest and largest covered markets anywhere, with more than 4,000 shops spread over 61 streets. Spices, carpets, gold and ceramics fill the lanes, and it deserves at least an hour of free wandering.

17:00 – At the end of the tour you are driven back to your hotel.

Overnight in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast.

No touring is scheduled today. Walk a neighbourhood, visit a museum, go shopping or simply rest before the southeastern part of the trip starts.

Overnight in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

05:00 – Hotel pickup and drive to the airport for your Diyarbakir flight (pickup time and airport are subject to change).

08:00 – Istanbul–Diyarbakir flight (the departure time can change).

09:30 – Landing in Diyarbakir and transfer to the start of the city program (arrival time depends on availability).

• Old City Walls: Close to six kilometres of black basalt ramparts surround the old city. Few Roman and Byzantine fortifications have survived in better condition, and the walls are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The dark volcanic stone is the first thing you notice about Diyarbakir.
• Four-Legged Minaret and Hazrat Suleiman Mosque: The minaret stands on slim columns over a busy street, one of the most unusual buildings in Turkey and a lively expression of the city's Ottoman-era faith. It forms the heart of the old town's religious quarter together with the mosque complex of Hazrat Suleiman.
• Diyarbakir Archaeological Museum and Ickale: The museum follows the civilisations of Mesopotamia from the Neolithic to Byzantine times. Ickale, the inner citadel, occupies the highest point inside the walls and looks out over a bend of the Tigris. Seen together, they show just how far back the city's history reaches.
• Surp Giragos Church, Great Mosque, Hasan Pasha Caravanserai, and 10 Arches Bridge: The Armenian church of Surp Giragos, the Great Mosque and the trading halls of the Hasan Pasha Han reflect the many cultures that turned this into one of the most fought-over and storied cities of the Middle East. Spanning the Tigris, the Ten-Arched Bridge is over a thousand years old.

17:00 – End of the tour and transfer to your hotel.

Overnight in Diyarbakir.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

09:30 – Pickup at your hotel and departure from Diyarbakir by road to Mardin, a drive of about 90 minutes.

• Midyat Old Town: This is the main market and cultural town of the Tur Abdin plateau. Its compact historic centre is built of honey-coloured limestone houses with finely carved floral and geometric fronts. The quiet lanes and covered market streets make a gentle introduction to the stone architecture of the southeast before Mardin itself.
• Mardin Castle (exterior view): From the top of the limestone ridge, the castle commands the whole city and the Mesopotamian plain running to the horizon. A steep, terraced town looking over endless flat land: no other Turkish city has a setting like it.
• Deyrulzafaran Monastery and Great Mosque of Mardin: Set in a remote spot outside the city, the Saffron Monastery has been home to Syriac Orthodox worship since the fifth century and is one of the oldest working Christian monasteries anywhere. The twelfth-century Ulu Camii, or Great Mosque, stands for Mardin's Islamic heritage, with a character just as old and richly decorated.
• Local Bazaar and Abbara passages: The traditional market and the vaulted abbara passages link old caravanserais and craft workshops into one working network. A walk here adds everyday street life to a day otherwise filled with religious monuments.

17:00 – Sightseeing finishes and the road journey continues from Mardin to Sanliurfa, about 3 hours.

Overnight in Sanliurfa.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

09:00 – Hotel pickup for the day with the deepest layers of history on the whole trip.

• Gobeklitepe: Found in 1994 and dated to roughly 10,000 BC, this is the oldest ritual complex known anywhere, six thousand years older than Stonehenge. It overturned earlier ideas about when organised religion and monumental building began, and its T-shaped pillars, carved with animals, rank as the most startling archaeological find of modern times.
• Harran and the Beehive Houses: The town is thought to be among the oldest cities on Earth that have never been abandoned; it is named in the Book of Genesis as well as in Assyrian inscriptions. Its cone-shaped mud-brick houses are a building type found only in this corner of the Fertile Crescent, developed on a flat, treeless plain where there was no timber for roofs.
• Balikligol (Pool of Abraham): Islamic tradition holds that the Assyrian king Nimrod threw the Prophet Abraham into a fire here, and God changed the flames to water and the coals to fish. By tradition the sacred carp in the pool are centuries old, and the mosque complex around it gives the centre of Sanliurfa its most spiritual atmosphere.

17:00 – Return transfer to your hotel.

Overnight in Sanliurfa.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

09:00 – Hotel pickup for the museum visits, followed by the road trip from Sanliurfa to Gaziantep, a drive of roughly 2 hours.

• Sanliurfa Archaeology Museum and Haleplibahce Mosaic Museum: Among the most important museums of the region, the complex displays the Gobeklitepe collection, including original carved pillars and finds from the dig, along with an outstanding set of floor mosaics from Roman Edessa. Coming here right after Gobeklitepe takes you from prehistory to classical antiquity in a single story.
• Zeugma Mosaic Museum: One of the biggest mosaic museums in the world, it preserves works saved before the waters of the Birecik Dam covered large parts of the old city. The famous “Gypsy Girl” and the room-sized mythological scenes are among the best Roman decorative art that survives.
• Gaziantep Old Town, Castle Exterior, and Baklava Culture: The city regularly appears on lists of the world's great food cities. Around the citadel, the old town combines Ottoman hans, copper workshops and bazaars with the pistachio tradition that has shaped local cooking for centuries, and the view from outside the castle frames the old quarter from above.

17:00 – End of the tour and transfer to your hotel.

Overnight in Gaziantep.

Meals: breakfast.

After breakfast you leave Gaziantep and travel by road to Cappadocia, a journey of about 5 hours. This day links the cities of the southeast with central Anatolia.

Overnight in Cappadocia.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

Optional early-morning add-ons: a hot air balloon flight, the most booked activity in Cappadocia and rated number one for its sunrise views, or a balloon watching tour that takes you to the best viewpoints for sunrise photos. Either can be added at the best available price when you book.

09:30 – Pickup at your hotel. If you want a balloon flight, this morning, before the tour starts, is the best time for it.

• Red Valley: Few written records from ancient Cappadocia mention Red Valley, yet its closeness to cave settlements suggests people used it as a natural route between communities. Its narrow passages and high walls would have sheltered anyone walking between Cavusin, Goreme and Urgup.
• Rose Valley (Gulludere Valley): The pinkish rock here is mostly compacted volcanic tuff, with more calcium carbonate than the harder basalt seen elsewhere in the region. Because it is softer, the cliffs of Gulludere were easy to carve, which is why so many rock-cut rooms are packed into this one valley.
• Cavusin Village: Large parts of old Cavusin are now unstable; pieces of the cliff break away from time to time and leave former interior rooms open to the air. For this reason parts are closed behind fences, but the sections you can visit still show clearly how a cliff community arranged daily life in carved rock.
• Pigeon Valley: On the Yellow Tour most visitors see Pigeon Valley from a viewpoint rather than hiking through it, which still conveys the size of the canyon and its carved cliffs. If you have spare time, you can walk down and follow part of the trail for a closer look from the valley floor.
• Underground City: Many visitors say curiosity quickly turns into real claustrophobia as the ceiling lowers and the tunnels narrow. That reaction makes sense: the cramped design was deliberate, meant to protect the people sheltering inside from the far greater threat above ground.

17:00 – Return transfer to your hotel.

Overnight in Cappadocia.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

09:30 – Hotel pickup for your second touring day in Cappadocia, following the classic northern route.

• Devrent Valley (Pink Valley): Compared with the tall fairy chimneys of Pasabag, the rock forms here are lower, broader and far more varied. That variety is the appeal: every column looks different, and the longer you look, the more you notice.
• Pasabag Open Air Museum: Faint traces of fresco survive inside one of the cave chapels you can enter. They are paler than the well-known paintings at Goreme Open Air Museum, but worth a close look, because this chapel sits inside a fairy chimney, not a carved cliff face.
• Avanos Pottery Workshop: Trying the potter's wheel is easier than it looks. With the instructor's hands on yours, you learn to centre and pull the clay, and most beginners shape something recognisable within five minutes, even if the first thirty seconds feel hopeless.
• Goreme Panoramic View: This viewpoint sits halfway through the Red Tour, between the northern valleys and the museum sites. A short stop up high lets you get your bearings before the second half of the day.
• Zelve Open Air Museum: In autumn the low sun picks out every grain of the carved rock and gives depth to photos of the facades. In spring the valley floor is greener and the tones softer. Either season photographs better than the flat light of a summer midday.
• Uchisar Castle (exterior view): The tallest natural rock formation in Cappadocia rises about sixty metres above the plateau and can be seen from almost anywhere around. Its face, carved over many centuries, is riddled with hundreds of openings and tunnels on every level, so it looks as much built as natural.

17:00 – Return transfer to your hotel.

Overnight in Cappadocia.

Meals: breakfast. Transfers: included.

After breakfast you check out of your hotel. Depending on your flight time, we drive you to the airport at Kayseri or Nevsehir. The flight may be direct or connect through Istanbul, depending on what is available on your travel date.

When you land at Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport, our team greets you at the exit and takes you on to your Kusadasi/Selcuk hotel.

Overnight in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

07:30 – Hotel pickup for a full day trip by road to Pamukkale.

• Pamukkale: In Denizli province, a hillside of dazzling white rock is one of Turkey's most unexpected sights. For thousands of years calcium-rich thermal water has run down the slope, building up shallow pools and smooth travertine steps. UNESCO listed it in 1988 together with the Greco-Roman city that once flourished above it.
• White Calcium Terraces: The springs carry so many minerals that they can whiten rock within a few decades, and over millennia they have shaped the entire slope. The terraces form as water spills from one ledge to the next, cooling a little at each step. Today conservation zones rotate the flow between sections so the travertine keeps its bright, healthy colour.
• Hierapolis Ancient City: Its theatre, cut into the hill above the terraces, is one of the most impressive in Turkey and looks out over the white travertine. At its height it held up to 15,000 people, and parts of the decorated stage building still stand. With colonnaded streets and temples as well, the site rewards several hours of exploring.
• Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool: Here mineral water, sunken ruins and a Roman legend come together. Fed by the Pamukkale springs, the water stays at 36 degrees all year, and real Roman marble columns, toppled by an earthquake centuries ago, lie on the bottom. Entry is not part of the tour price and is paid at the pool; it is an optional extra for anyone who wants to try the bathing tradition.

16:00 – Drive back to your Kusadasi/Selcuk hotel.

Overnight in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Meals: breakfast and lunch. Transfers: included.

08:45 – Hotel pickup for the morning in Ephesus.

• Ephesus Ancient City: On Curetes Street stands Hadrian's Temple. It is small beside the Library or the Great Theatre, yet with its carved arch and delicate friezes it ranks among the city's most elegant buildings. Above the door, the carved faces of Medusa and Tyche have survived remarkably well, and your guide explains what each figure means, so a short stop turns into a real lesson.
• House of Virgin Mary: A small fountain here gives spring water that many pilgrims believe can heal. People line up to fill little bottles and carry it home as a souvenir of the pilgrimage. Whatever your beliefs, watching this ritual helps explain why the place means so much to so many.
• Temple of Artemis: Of all the Ephesus stops, this one rewards curiosity more than the eye. There is little to see: a single column, a shallow marsh and a few storks. Yet what once stood here, the reasons it was built and the way it disappeared make a story weighty enough to fill an afternoon of conversation, and a guide with real passion for the place changes everything.

16:00 – End of the tour and drive to the airport in Izmir.

20:30 – Izmir–Istanbul flight (the departure time can change).

21:45 – Landing in Istanbul, then on to your hotel (the landing time depends on availability).

Overnight in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast.

The day is unplanned. Explore neighbourhoods, shop, see a museum or just slow down after the long journey across the country.

Overnight in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast. Transfers: included.

The morning is relaxed, as the cruise only starts in the afternoon.

13:30 – Hotel pickup and drive to the pier.

• Bosphorus Cruise: Leaving from the European shore, the boat travels about fifteen kilometres up the strait, under the suspension bridges and past the wooded upper shores, before turning back. It shows you Istanbul's geography in a way that two days on foot cannot.
• Dolmabahce Palace: From the water you take in the full 600-metre Bosphorus frontage, Europe's longest palace waterfront, completed in 1856 as the Ottoman answer to European grandeur. The shoreline gates and fountains are easy to make out from the deck.
• Ortakoy Mosque and Bridge: With the first Bosphorus suspension bridge right behind it, the Baroque mosque on the Ortakoy waterfront is one of Istanbul's most photographed views, and the boat gives you the perfect angle.
• Rumeli Fortress: Mehmed II had it put up in just four months in 1452 to control shipping on the Bosphorus ahead of his siege of Constantinople. It survives almost complete, and from the water its position at the strait's narrowest point makes its purpose obvious.

16:00 – After the cruise you are driven back to the hotel.

Overnight in Istanbul.

Meals: breakfast. Transfers: included.

Based on your international flight details, we arrange your transfer from the hotel to Sabiha Gokcen Airport or Istanbul Airport, and your 16 days across Turkey come to a close.