Turkey 7-Day Luxury Private Tour

Welcome to Turkey. Your driver meets you at Istanbul Airport and takes you to your hotel, where you can settle in and rest after the flight. Nothing is planned today. If you arrive with energy to spare, walk down to the waterfront for a glass of tea as the ferries cross to Asia, or have an early dinner on a rooftop with a view of the domes and minarets. Your guide will be in touch this evening to go over the plans for tomorrow.

After breakfast, meet your private guide in Sultanahmet, the heart of old Istanbul. Begin at Hagia Sophia, built as a church in the sixth century and later a mosque, where the great dome still seems to float above the floor. Cross the square to the Blue Mosque, named for the thousands of blue tiles inside, then step down into the cool, quiet Basilica Cistern with its rows of lantern-lit columns. Mosque visits are timed around prayer hours. You are back at the hotel in the afternoon, with the evening free.

This morning your guide takes you through Topkapi Palace, home of the Ottoman sultans for almost four hundred years. Walk through its courtyards and pavilions, see the treasury and the tiled rooms of the Harem, and stop on the terrace where the Golden Horn meets the Bosphorus. Topkapi closes on Tuesdays, so we plan the days around it. After lunch, board a private boat for a cruise along the Bosphorus, past waterside palaces, wooden mansions and the old fortress of Rumeli Hisarı.

After a relaxed breakfast, transfer to the airport for a flight of about an hour and a half to Kayseri or Nevşehir. Your driver meets you on arrival and takes you into Cappadocia, where the landscape changes quickly into soft valleys, rock cones and villages cut into the hillsides. Check in to your cave hotel or valley-view hotel and take the afternoon slowly. In the evening, dinner is included, and the terraces are a lovely place to watch the light fade over the rocks.

Early this morning, if the weather allows, your hot-air balloon lifts off before sunrise and drifts over the valleys as the sky turns pink and gold. You are back at the hotel for breakfast and a rest. Later, your guide takes you to the Göreme Open Air Museum, where monks carved churches and chapels into the rock and covered the walls with frescoes. Finish with a short walk among the fairy chimneys before you head back for a quiet evening.

This morning, drive about 40 minutes to Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı, one of the underground cities where villagers once sheltered for weeks, with stables, kitchens and chapels several floors below ground. The passages are narrow in places, so your guide adjusts the visit to your comfort. On the way back, stop at Uchisar Castle for the wide view over the valleys. The afternoon is free for the pool, a massage or a walk, and dinner tonight is included.

Enjoy a last breakfast on the terrace with a view of the valleys. At the agreed time your driver takes you to Kayseri or Nevşehir Airport for the included flight to Istanbul, about an hour and a half, which we book to connect comfortably with your flight home. We say goodbye there and hope you leave with the domes of Istanbul and the morning balloons of Cappadocia still clear in your mind.