From Istanbul to the Coast: An 8-Day Adventure through Turkey's Most Beautiful Landscapes

Customer Reviews

• BK

  Bairanna Reddy

  · November 2nd, 2024
  good experience would recommend others/friends
  Trip date: October 2024
• 

  Cecilia

  · October 27th, 2024
  Tour 8 days Turkey. We enjoyed the trip. The organization of the trip was great. Friendly guides. The groups were small 3-5 people. The tours had clear explanations. We found the visits to carpets, porcelain, leather, stones, jewelry too often in the program. We would prefer to spend more time on the visits to nature, culture and history. When we had a question about transportation, flight, start time, we were immediately responded to via the app. In short, highly recommended.
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  Trip date: October 2024
• 

  Saroj

  · October 24th, 2024
  The transportation and hotel accommodations were exceptional, and the tour operator stayed in constant communication, providing timely updates and details throughout the trip. Most of the tour guides were wonderful, each adding their unique touch to the experience. I especially want to commend the tour guide in Istanbul, who went above and beyond to ensure we had an enriching experience. The food options offered were diverse, catering well to both vegetarians and non-vegetarians. In Kusadasi/Pamukkale, our guide was not only informative but also had a great sense of humour, making the tour even more enjoyable. However, the food options were quite limited, especially for vegetarians, with no proper main meal available. In Cappadocia, our guide was knowledgeable but provided only 5-20 minutes at most sites for us to explore, even though we had removed a couple of activities from the day's itinerary. On a positive note, the buffet lunch was delicious, offering plenty of choices for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian guests.
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  Trip date: October 2024
• VM

  Vanessa UV

  · October 10th, 2024
  Tour itinerary is very tight especially in kusadasi and cappadocia. Clarification needed for Istanbul sites as it is a walking tour and no transportation is provided. Hotel was close to most sites. Some sites require 2-3 hours minimum to really explore. Our guide Halil in Kusadasi is phenomenal. He has deep knowledge of history and was so welcoming of questions. Our guide in Cappadocia was excellent at problem solving as there were issues with entrance fees which advertised as accepting euros but did not. He was adept at finding a solution to allow payment in liras. Lots of walking so those with mobility issues may find some sites challenging. Generally, tour was a small taste of the beauty of Turkey. Some hiccups that were frustrating at times but given the planning logistics, was overall negligible. Lunches in Istanbul are preset and the fish restaurant was delicious. Hotel staff were all welcoming and very kind. At recital hotel in Istanbul a staff member shared his cough medicine🤩
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  Trip date: October 2024
• BC

  Ben

  · October 9th, 2024
  Amazing sights, good hotels, planning could be improved. This tour was a good weeklong highlights of Turkey package, the places visited were amazing and varied. However there is definitely room for improvement, which is probably reflected in the price being cheaper than a lot of other similar tours. Although the tour operator was responsive and adapted to our schedule, it was bit difficult getting the exact details about everything. We only received info about the hotels, flights etc the day before. The fact the flight times were unclear before the beginning of the tour meant that that some days were jam packed leading to less time than desired at certain sights, and then the next day was spent waiting around to go to the airport. For instance the last day in Cappadocia there was nothing on the schedule and the flights to Istanbul were at 11pm - this meant we had the whole day to explore for ourselves but as we weren't informed of the flight times in advance we couldn't book anything in advance for that day. However the operator to their credit did arrange a van for us at no extra change this day so we could visit another town. Another day, during the Pammukale visit, we didn't have lunch until 4pm, which wasn't made clear to us until midday after we had entered the site. The guides were a bit hit and miss. The guide in Istanbul, Bahadir, was great, and the guide in Cappadocia was good as well, however the guide we had for Pammukale and Ephesus was a bit average. We didn't get much information at Pammukale and Hierapolis in particular which was odd because the site is fascinating with a lot of history. The specific guides are probably just luck of the draw, but worth noting. The worst part of the trip was the transport between each city. It seemed that the flights were getting booked just days prior to travelling, and the flight times were not ideal. The flight to Kusadasi was at 8pm, and after the hour long ride from the airport we didn't arrive at the hotel until after 11pm. The same thing happened with the flights to Cappadocia, not arriving until 11:30pm with the balloons supposedly at 4:30am the next morning. This flight also had a transfer in Istanbul, which meant we spent from 2pm until 11:30 that day in transport mode. And then the final flight back to Istanbul we arrived at the hotel at 2am which was pretty brutal. Disappointingly, the details around the balloon flights in Cappadocia were also unclear; it sounded like the operator had already made reservations. However when we inquired we were told that all flights had been cancelled as the balloons had been grounded due to weather for a few days, and the prices had gone "black market", more than double what we were expecting. I can't speak to the validity of this, but our individual tour guides all indicated that we should have booked well in advance. Perhaps this is what the operator did and the black market prices was just unlucky, but again something worth keeping in mind. Still, the hotels were all nice, the breakfasts and lunches were good, transportation arrived on time and having shuttles made everything very convenient. As mentioned the sights are incredible and we finished the tour with good memories. Overall I think we probably got our moneys worth, but with a little extra planning this tour could be improved a lot.
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  Trip date: September 2024
• JS

  Joshua

  · September 26th, 2024
  Overall it was decent value, when you add up hotels, flights, shuttles, meals and guides. Not everything was perfect, which is OK, but then that makes for an OK experience, not a perfect one. First the Good: - It was really nice to have mostly everything planned out for us and logistical details taken care of, not what I usually do, so it was a nice change. We didn't have to bargain for many things, compare prices, transport ourselves, etc. - We got a lot of buffet style food, which was actually great, because we got to try a little of everything and the food was generally very good. - The vans were super ballin'. - The hotels in Kusadesi and Istanbul were pretty nice. - Our guides for Ephesus, Pumukkale and Cappadocia were very good at what they did. I felt I got to know the country better through them. They were friendly and helpful. -Some of the days the tour was just us. On one hand it would be nice to have met more travelers, on the other hand, it felt like we were getting a very personal experience. - There were a couple of things we asked to change, and they were accommodating about this. Now the not so good: - We never got offered to do a hot air balloon tour at all. Not before Cappadocia and not during our stay there. They are also 300-500 USD per person if we even could do it, which could have been communicated to us beforehand. This was a major disappointment. - It's not really an 8 day tour, because the first day is arrival with nothing planned. The last day is departure with nothing planned, and the second to last day also had no activities. So really its a 5 day adventure with 3 travel/chill out days. It's more or less stated in the fine print, but its good to be aware of this. - The guide / experience in Istanbul was a big letdown. They would not let our guide into Aya Sophia, even though there were many other guides inside for other people. - The guide convinced us all to skip Topkapi. I wanted to go, but didn't want to make waves. Disappointed because others have said this is a must see. - Some of the tours were really disguised sales gimmicks, including the grand bazaar, carpet weaving tutorial, pottery workshop... each one had a hard sales pitch at the end to buy overpriced stuff that the tour company obviously makes a high commission off of. Okay fine, you don't have to buy anything, but we could have been touring the underground cisterns or something else instead with our limited time. - I knew we would have to pay for museums, but was surprised when we had to pay for the Bosphorous tour and a few other things. A heads up of how much things cost would have been nice. The museums cost a lot more than we thought, though this wasn't a huge deal. - The Bosphorous tour itself was really bad. The tour was given by a poor quality, pre-programmed recording that you couldn't understand with the thick accent and high noise level, and that which we could understand was underwhelming. I feel that non-native English speakers would not be able to understand at all. The guide was too busy smoking cigarettes to be bothered to tell us anything useful. We could have paid 40 lira for a ride on the public ferry and got the same tour. - It did not include 6 lunches as stated. We only got 4. - Communication was at really great, and other times poor. We were not given flight info until the day of or day before sometimes. One day we showed up and there is no driver or greeter to be found with no info on what to do. Had to message the company. The company sent us info with a driver, car model and license plate. These never matched up. How do we know we aren't getting in the car with a random stranger? We were at first not told when to meet to go from Cappadocia to Istanbul. When we asked, we were told 3pm. But then it turns out we were leaving out of a different airport that was closer, and we could wait till 5pm. Somebody told the driver, but nobody told us, so we ended up wasting the day hanging out at the hotel. - The cave hotel in Cappadocia was really bad. No AC, no fan, bad ventilation, so had to sleep with the window open, which didn't feel safe and let in a lot of light. Very noisy, hard to sleep. We even had a situation where we tried to go to our room and somebody who worked there as a waitress or something started yelling at us in Turkish. Apparently she was trying to say the restauraunt was closed, we had to translate through one of the guests dining over about 5 minutes that we were actually guests at the hotel. It was a very unpleasant experience. -Minor details: I wish we were given some ideas of things to do during our downtime, we totally didn't know about the underground cisterns until afterward. I wish I had some idea of what kind of tips were expected. And I wish we were told some non-touristy places to eat for our time off. It seemed like all the businesses know they are on the tourist circuit, and they all charge at least double in the areas we were at (more expensive than USA in many places). People were actually trying to bargain with us over the price of dinner! Overall, if you aren't too fussy, and just want to take a trip without thinking too much, this will work. It will be great for less hassle, good food and an OK experience. But bear in mind you will not get the full experience, will have to endure some sales pitches.and you may be let down by the guides. If I had to do it over again, I would have booked the guides directly, and taken more days to do the same amount of stuff.
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  Trip date: September 2024
• UZ

  Urte

  · September 24th, 2024
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  Very good service and support from the organization team. The trip was fantastic. We were treated like VIP guests. The accommodation was very clean and modern. The breakfast was varied with lots of fresh fruit. A good balance between adventure and free time. The tour guide was very flexible and accommodated special requests that were not on the itinerary. All in all, a successful trip that we can recommend. Great value for money.
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  Trip date: September 2024
• MW

  Maciej

  · September 16th, 2024
  The guide tours in Istanbul wasn’t very good, he changed the dates. In Kuşadası he was excellent and in Cappadocia Fatima was the best. The pick ups from everywhere were perfect, always on time . All the hotels were nice only in Cappadocia wasn’t very good. Lunches perfect but breakfast were terrible. This tour is very good value for the money as it included flights, airport transfers, which are all fairly long,, hotels, breakfasts and some lunches. All staff, guides and drivers were very helpful and polite. Not the fault of the tour company, we had some flight and scheduling glitches but the staff was always helpful in doing their best to accommodate. All 3 locations on the tour are very interesting and well worth seeing. This tour is the most efficient and cost effective way to seek everything in the time allotted.
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  Trip date: September 2024
• 

  Carina

  · September 1st, 2024
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  The trip/tour ('From Istanbul to the Coast: An 8-Day Adventure through Turkey's Most Beautiful Landscapes') is highly recommended and the price-performance ratio (690 CHF p.p.) can hardly be beaten. We received excellent service and were picked up at the airports by a personal chauffeur. The day tours were conducted by local guides who led us well and told us lots of interesting facts. The hotels were carefully selected and were of a sufficient quality standard. However, we were not convinced by the breakfast in the respective hotels. In any case, the balloon flight in Cappadocia is a unique and fantastic experience and can be recommended to everyone (the flight is not included in the trip and cost us €175 per person). One negative aspect: The coordination with the organizer was rather last minute and you had to ask to get all the relevant information and tickets.
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  Trip date: August 2024
• KM

  Katie

  · July 22nd, 2024
  We had Abe as our tour guide for the 8-day trip from Istanbul to Kusadasi. He was excellent at making sure our domestic travels — which included taking Mercedes sprinter vans with (much needed) AC to various flights — ran smoothly, even when unplanned things came up. Abe had immense insight on Turkish history, and he was able to make it interesting and relatable for our group, in which members’ ages ranged from 18 to 56. We felt that we spent a good amount of time in each city and were given the opportunity to have both touristy and non-touristy experiences, including personalized shopping experiences per our request. Although the majority (if not all) of the restaurants on the tour catered to tourists, the meals remained traditional and were delicious. This trip makes us want to come back to the beautiful country!
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  Trip date: June 2024