10 Days Istanbul, Cappadocia, Ephesus, and Antalya Tour

After your flight lands, our airport team will meet you according to your flight details at Istanbul Airport (IST) or Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW).

You will be transferred to your hotel in Istanbul for check-in and rest after your journey.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:30 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the Sultanahmet district.

• Hagia Sophia: Built in 537 AD, Hagia Sophia carried religious authority across two empires and still dominates the Istanbul skyline. Its vast interior, decorated with Byzantine mosaics alongside Ottoman calligraphy, makes the building one of the most layered historical spaces in the world. Standing inside gives an immediate sense of how Istanbul became a crossroads of civilizations.
• Blue Mosque: The Sultan Ahmed Mosque earns its popular name from the 20,000 hand-painted Iznik tiles that line its interior walls. Six slender minarets define the exterior silhouette that frames Sultanahmet Square. It remains an active place of worship, which adds a living cultural dimension absent from purely archaeological sites.
• Hippodrome of Constantinople: Once the civic and sporting heart of Byzantine Constantinople, the Hippodrome held up to 100,000 spectators for chariot races and public ceremonies. The Egyptian obelisk, the Serpent Column, and the Column of Constantine still stand in place, anchoring the square to its 4th-century origins.
• Grand Bazaar (Free Time): With over 4,000 shops spread across 61 covered streets, the Grand Bazaar has served as Istanbul's commercial center since 1461. Beyond the spice stalls and carpet sellers, the labyrinthine architecture itself rewards slow exploration. Free time here lets you shop at your own rhythm before the tour group reconvenes.

12:45 - Half day Istanbul city tour ends at Grand Bazaar.

Transfer back to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Breakfast

Morning is free.

13:30 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the Bosphorus pier.

Board the Bosphorus Cruise and sail between Europe and Asia past Ottoman palaces and waterfront neighborhoods.

16:00 - The cruise ends.

Transfer back to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Lunch

04:00 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the airport. (Pickup time and airport may change.)

06:40 - Flight from Istanbul to Cappadocia. (Flight time may change.)

08:00 - Arrival at Cappadocia Airport. (Arrival airport and time may change according to availability.)

Meet our team after landing.

Transfer to the North Cappadocia tour area.

• Devrent Valley (Pink Valley): Walk through Devrent Valley's open plateau and you will find rock columns shaped by millions of years of volcanic erosion into unmistakable animal silhouettes. Your guide will point out the famous camel formation and challenge you to spot the dolphin and seal shapes hidden among the pillars.
• Pasabag Open Air Museum: From a geological standpoint, Pasabag demonstrates one of Cappadocia's most important erosion mechanisms in a single visible sequence: you can see fully formed chimneys, partially eroded chimneys, and worn stumps all within the same site. It is an accidental textbook of volcanic rock formation.
• Avanos Pottery Workshop: Kizilirmak River, visible from Avanos, is Turkey's longest river, originating in the eastern highlands and running west across Anatolia before reaching the Black Sea. Its path through Cappadocia deposited the red clay sediment that turned Avanos into a pottery center, a connection the town has maintained ever since.
• Goreme Panoramic View: It is one of the few stops on the Red Tour where your guide encourages independent exploration of the viewpoint rather than a guided explanation. The landscape speaks clearly enough for itself, and quiet observation here produces a different quality of experience than guided narration.
• Zelve Open Air Museum: Byzantine Christians established Zelve as a monastic settlement, and the village's earliest carved spaces were chapels and hermit cells. Over centuries, the settlement evolved into a mixed community of Muslim and Christian residents living in adjacent cave neighborhoods, a coexistence that left evidence in both religious architecture.
• Uchisar Castle (exterior view): Looking at Uchisar Castle from the designated viewpoint, you can count dozens of carved openings across the rock face, each one representing a deliberate decision about where to place a room, a storage space, or a pigeon house. That accumulated intentionality across centuries of carving is part of what makes the exterior so visually rich.

17:00 - The Cappadocia tour ends.

Transfer to your hotel in Cappadocia.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

10:00 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the South Cappadocia tour area.

• Red Valley: Volcanic eruptions millions of years ago deposited thick layers of ash across Cappadocia, and Red Valley is where wind and rain sculpted those layers into their most dramatic forms. Walk the trail between towering orange and rust-red pillars and you will understand why this is one of the region's most photographed landscapes.
• Rose Valley (Gulludere Valley): Fruit trees grow in surprising abundance along Rose Valley's lower trail, remnants of orchards planted by communities who farmed the valley floor for centuries alongside their cliff dwellings. In late summer, ripe fruit falls onto the path, and the scent of apricots and grapes mixes with the dry mineral smell of the rock walls above.
• Cavusin Village: Cavusin sits within five minutes' drive of both Goreme and Rose Valley, making it a natural midpoint stop between Cappadocia's most visited heritage sites. Its position on the Yellow Tour route ensures it receives a steady stream of visitors, though the village itself never feels as crowded as the more famous open air museums.
• Pigeon Valley: Cappadocia's agricultural landscape depended on Pigeon Valley-style dovecotes throughout the medieval period, and their concentration here reflects how central this canyon was to the regional farming economy. Researchers studying Cappadocia's land use history use the distribution of carved pigeon houses to map patterns of agricultural settlement across the valley system.
• Underground City: Cappadocia's underground city was not a simple bunker but a functioning community space, with carved rooms designated for sleeping, food storage, wine production, animal shelter, and religious worship. A small chapel cut into one of the deeper levels confirms that residents maintained their religious life even when hidden beneath the earth under threat of invasion.

17:00 - The guided program ends.

Transfer back to your hotel in Cappadocia.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia

Meal: Breakfast

After breakfast, transfer to the airport.

Flight from Cappadocia to Izmir. If a direct flight is not available, we will arrange a connected flight via Istanbul. (Flight time may change.)

Arrival at Izmir Airport. (Arrival time may change according to availability.)

Meet our team after landing.

Transfer to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Rest of the day free to explore on your own.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:30 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to Ephesus Ancient City.

• Ephesus Ancient City: Roman baths in Ephesus give visitors a rare look at how public hygiene functioned at a civic scale two thousand years ago. The large vaulted chambers would have been heated by underground systems, and different rooms served different temperature preferences. Seeing the engineering behind something as everyday as a bathhouse shifts the way you think about Roman ingenuity throughout the rest of your visit.
• House of Virgin Mary: Bulbul Mountain overlooks the entire Ephesus valley, and the path to the House of Virgin Mary passes through dense forest that feels ancient in its own right. The chapel itself is small and simple, built over the ruins of an even earlier structure, but its plainness is part of what makes it powerful. Nothing here competes with the spiritual purpose of the space.
• Temple of Artemis: Looking at the lone column near Selcuk and knowing it represents a wonder that once outranked the Colosseum in every ancient travel account produces a specific kind of historical vertigo. How completely something can vanish, even something built to endure forever, is a lesson the Temple of Artemis teaches better than almost any other site in the ancient world. Travelers tend to leave quieter than they arrived.

17:00 - The guided program ends.

Transfer back to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk

Meal: Breakfast

After breakfast, transfer to the airport.

Flight from Izmir to Antalya. Direct flights are usually available, but if they are not operating seasonally, we will arrange a connected flight via Istanbul. (Flight time may change.)

Arrival at Antalya Airport. (Arrival time may change according to availability.)

Meet our team after landing.

Transfer to your hotel in Antalya.

Rest of the day free to explore on your own.

Overnight stay in Antalya

Meal: Breakfast

Free time to explore on your own.

Overnight stay in Antalya

Meal: Breakfast

After breakfast at your hotel, the tour services end. Hotel check-out follows the hotel's standard check-out time.

Your tour ends here.