Turkey 15-Day Luxury Private Tour

Welcome to Istanbul. Your private driver meets you at the airport and brings you to your hotel, where the day is free for you to rest. There is no schedule today. When you are ready, a short walk is the best introduction to the city: the smell of fresh simit from a street cart, the gulls over the water, the domes on the skyline. Your guide will be in touch this evening to agree on tomorrow’s start. A welcome dinner near your hotel is included tonight, timed around your arrival.

Your guide meets you after breakfast for a morning in the old city. Hagia Sophia comes first, with its vast dome, its marble floors worn smooth by centuries of visitors and its glittering mosaics in the upper galleries. Cross to the Blue Mosque, its interior covered in blue and white tiles, visiting between prayers. Finally, descend into the Basilica Cistern, cool and dim, with two Medusa heads at the base of its columns. The afternoon is free.

Topkapi Palace fills the morning: the Gate of Salutation, the imperial kitchens, the treasury and the private world of the Harem, all set on the hill above the water. The palace is closed on Tuesdays, so we plan around that. After lunch, your private boat cruise follows the Bosphorus north between two continents, past Dolmabahçe Palace, the fishing village of Arnavutköy and the towers of Rumeli Hisarı, before turning back toward the city.

After breakfast, fly from Istanbul to Kayseri or Nevşehir, about an hour and a half. Your driver meets you for the drive of about an hour into Cappadocia, where villages are carved into the rock and the valleys turn pink and gold in the afternoon light. Settle into your cave hotel or valley-view hotel and take the rest of the day easy. Dinner is included tonight.

Before dawn, if the weather is right, your balloon rises into the cold morning air and floats over valleys of rock cones and orchards as the sun comes up. Return for breakfast and a rest. Later, visit the Göreme Open Air Museum with your guide, where monks once lived and prayed in churches cut into the cliffs, decorated with vivid frescoes. Enjoy a quiet evening at your hotel.

This morning, drive about 40 minutes to Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı, two of the underground cities where whole communities once took refuge, moving through tunnels between kitchens, stables, storerooms and chapels many floors down. Your guide keeps the visit comfortable, especially in the lowest passages. Stop at Uchisar Castle on the way back for the view, and spend the afternoon resting at the hotel.

A morning flight of about an hour and a half brings you from Kayseri to Izmir. Your driver takes you south to Şirince, an old village of stone houses and vine-covered lanes in the hills above Selçuk, where you can stop for lunch. Then continue for about twenty minutes to your hotel near Kuşadası, with a free evening by the Aegean.

Your guide meets you early to explore Ephesus before the day warms up. Stroll down the marble streets of what was once one of the largest cities of the Roman world, visit the terrace houses with their mosaics, and stand before the two-story façade of the Library of Celsus. End at the great theater, then return to the coast for lunch and a free afternoon by the sea.

After breakfast, leave the coast for a drive of about three hours east through the Meander valley, with a lunch stop on the way. Arrive at Pamukkale in the afternoon and rest. Later, walk barefoot on the white travertine terraces, where warm water collects in shallow pools, and watch the sun set across the valley. Dinner is included tonight.

Spend the early morning in Hierapolis, the Roman spa town above the terraces, with its theater, its colonnaded street and the Antique Pool, where you can swim among sunken columns (the pool has its own small fee). Then drive south over the Taurus foothills to Antalya, about three hours with a lunch stop. Check in to your hotel in or near the old town, with the evening free.

In the morning, drive about 45 minutes with your guide to Aspendos, the best-preserved Roman theater in the world, still used for concerts today. Return to Antalya for lunch and a slow afternoon. Later, as it cools, walk through Kaleiçi, the old walled town, past Hadrian’s Gate and down narrow lanes of Ottoman houses to the little harbor, a lovely place for a drink at sunset.

Today you follow one of the most beautiful roads in Turkey, west along the Mediterranean between the mountains and the sea. Stop at Myra with your guide, where Lycian tombs are cut into the cliff face above a Roman theater, and pause for lunch along the way. You arrive in Kaş in the afternoon, a small whitewashed harbor town facing the Greek island of Kastellorizo. The evening is free to settle in.

A whole day to do as you please. Swim from the rocks below your hotel, browse the bougainvillea-covered lanes of the old town, or simply enjoy a long lunch overlooking the harbor. If you would like to go out on the water, we can arrange a private boat to Kekova, where the ruins of a sunken Lycian city lie just below the surface and the castle of Simena rises above the bay.

After a slow breakfast, drive about 45 minutes west to Patara with your guide. The ancient city has a restored assembly hall and a colonnaded street, and beyond it lies one of the longest sandy beaches in Turkey, backed by dunes and protected as a turtle nesting site. Stop in pretty Kalkan for an included lunch on the way back, then enjoy a free afternoon and an included farewell dinner in Kaş.

Take your time over a final breakfast overlooking the sea. At the agreed time your driver takes you to Dalaman Airport, about two hours along the coast and through the hills, for the included flight to Istanbul, where you connect to your flight home; if you fly home directly from Dalaman, we simply adjust the timing. We say goodbye there and hope you travel home with Istanbul’s skyline, Cappadocia’s balloons and the blue water of the Turquoise Coast still with you.