Turkey 12-Day Luxury Private Tour

Welcome to Turkey. Your driver is waiting at Istanbul Airport to bring you to your hotel, and the rest of the day is entirely free. Take time to unpack and rest. Later, if you feel like it, stroll to the nearest café for a first glass of Turkish tea, or watch the sunset from a terrace as the ferries criss-cross the water below. Your guide will be in touch in the evening to agree a start time for tomorrow.

Your first full day starts in Sultanahmet with your private guide. Hagia Sophia has stood here for nearly 1,500 years, first as the greatest church in Christendom and later as an imperial mosque, and its dome is still astonishing. Nearby, the Blue Mosque glows with the İznik tiles that gave it its name; visits avoid prayer times. Finish below ground in the Basilica Cistern, where hundreds of columns rise from the water. The rest of the afternoon is yours.

In the morning, explore Topkapi Palace with your guide: the gates and courtyards where the court gathered, the treasury with its famous dagger and diamond, and the Harem with its tiled chambers. The palace closes on Tuesdays, which we take into account when planning. In the afternoon a private boat takes you up the Bosphorus, between Europe and Asia, past Dolmabahçe Palace, the Ortaköy Mosque and the old fortress of Rumeli Hisarı.

After breakfast, your driver takes you to the airport for the flight of about an hour and a half to Kayseri or Nevşehir. A drive of about an hour follows, through farmland that slowly gives way to the soft rock and fairy chimneys of Cappadocia. Check in to your cave hotel or valley-view hotel and spend the rest of the afternoon at ease. Dinner is included tonight, and the views from the terrace at dusk are a fine welcome to the region.

The day begins early with a hot-air balloon flight, weather permitting, as the sun rises over the valleys and the sky fills with color. Return to the hotel for breakfast and a rest. Late in the morning your guide takes you to the Göreme Open Air Museum, a cluster of rock-cut churches whose walls are covered with Byzantine frescoes. Afterward, walk among the fairy chimneys and enjoy a quiet evening.

After breakfast, drive about 40 minutes to the underground city of Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı. These cities reach several levels below ground, with ventilation shafts, stables and chapels carved out of the rock, and your guide sets the pace through the narrower passages. Stop at Uchisar Castle on the way back for the view across Pigeon Valley. The afternoon is free to rest, swim or have a massage at the hotel.

Today you fly from Kayseri to Izmir, about an hour and a half. Your driver meets you and takes you south, with a stop in Şirince, a pretty hill village above Selçuk known for its stone houses and shady village squares, for lunch at your leisure. Then continue to your hotel on the coast near Kuşadası, about twenty minutes away. The evening is relaxed, with dinner included and the Aegean just outside.

This morning you visit Ephesus with your guide, starting early while it is still cool. Walk down Curetes Street between columns and statues, peek into the terrace houses with their mosaics and wall paintings, and stand in front of the Library of Celsus before ending at the great theater. You are back at the hotel for lunch, and the afternoon is free for a swim or a quiet hour on your terrace.

After a slow breakfast, drive inland for about three hours through the fig and olive country of the Meander valley, with a stop for lunch along the way. Check in at Pamukkale in the afternoon and rest. As the day cools, walk barefoot on the white travertine terraces, their pools reflecting the sky, and stay to watch the sunset turn the limestone pink. Dinner is included tonight.

Return to the top of the terraces this morning for the ancient spa town of Hierapolis, with its long necropolis, its Roman theater and the warm Antique Pool, where you can swim among fallen columns if you wish (the pool has its own small fee). Then head southwest to the coast, about three and a half hours with a lunch stop, and arrive in Bodrum in the late afternoon. Dinner is included this evening, perhaps on a terrace above the bay.

Spend a gentle morning in Bodrum with your guide. The Castle of St. Peter, built by the Knights of St. John, stands between the two bays and now holds a fine museum of underwater archaeology, with ancient shipwrecks and their cargo. Afterward, walk along the harbor, where wooden gulets are moored in long rows. The afternoon is free for the beach, the pool or a long lunch by the water.

Take your time over a last breakfast by the sea. At the agreed time your driver takes you to Milas–Bodrum Airport, about forty minutes away, for the included flight to Istanbul, where you connect to your flight home; if you fly home directly from Bodrum, we simply adjust the timing. We say goodbye there, and hope you leave with the light of the Aegean and the many sides of Turkey still with you.