10 Days Istanbul, Cappadocia, Pamukkale, and Ephesus 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 then be transferred to your hotel in Istanbul for check-in.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Breakfast

08:30 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to Sultanahmet, Istanbul's historic peninsula.

• Hagia Sophia: Built in 537 AD under Emperor Justinian I, Hagia Sophia served as the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years before becoming an imperial mosque under the Ottomans. Its central dome, spanning 31 metres, was an engineering feat not surpassed in Europe for centuries.
• Blue Mosque: Completed in 1616 under Sultan Ahmed I, the Blue Mosque is the only Ottoman imperial mosque in Istanbul with six minarets. Its interior is lined with more than 20,000 hand-painted Iznik tiles, giving the walls a distinctive blue luminance that inspired the mosque's popular name.
• Hippodrome: The Hippodrome was the civic and sporting heart of Byzantine Constantinople, capable of holding up to 100,000 spectators for chariot races and public ceremonies. Three ancient monuments still stand along its central spine: the Egyptian Obelisk of Thutmose III, the Serpent Column from Delphi, and the Column of Constantine.
• Grand Bazaar (Free Time): One of the world's oldest continuously operating covered markets, the Grand Bazaar was established in the 1450s shortly after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople. Its 61 covered streets and more than 4,000 shops make it a living piece of commercial Istanbul history that rewards exploration at your own pace.

12:45 - Morning tour ends at the Grand Bazaar.

Transfer back to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Breakfast

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

Board the Bosphorus Cruise.

• Bosphorus Cruise: The Bosphorus strait divides Istanbul across two continents and was the strategic reason empires fought to control this city for 2,500 years. Cruising its 31-kilometre length reveals Ottoman waterfront palaces, fortresses built by Mehmet II before the 1453 conquest, and the suspension bridges linking Europe and Asia.
• Panoramic Experience: From the upper deck you can see how Istanbul's seven hills shaped its skyline, with the silhouettes of the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, and the Galata Tower visible together from the water, a perspective impossible to replicate from street level.

16:00 - The cruise ends.

Transfer back to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Lunch

04:30 - Pick up from your hotel and transfer to the airport. (Pickup time and airport may change.)

07:00 - Flight from Istanbul to Cappadocia. (Flight time may change.)

08:25 - Arrival at Cappadocia Airport. (Arrival airport and time may change according to availability.)

Transfer to the first touring area and meet your guide.

• Devrent Valley (Pink Valley): Unlike any other stop on the Cappadocia Red Tour, Devrent Valley has no ticket booth, no carved interiors, and no historical buildings. It is simply an open outdoor gallery of eroded volcanic ash formations, each one shaped differently from its neighbor.
• Pasabag Open Air Museum: Pasabag's three-headed fairy chimney is the site's most photographed formation, and your guide will take you to the established viewpoint where all three caps appear in a single composition. Getting that composition right without a guide requires more trial and error than most visitors expect.
• Avanos Pottery Workshop: Watching an experienced Avanos potter center and raise a vessel in under two minutes is a humbling demonstration of how much physical skill the craft requires. Most visitors who attempt the wheel quickly develop a new respect for every handmade ceramic piece they have ever owned.
• Goreme Panoramic View: Goreme Panoramic View receives its peak visitor numbers between ten and noon on summer days, when multiple tour groups arrive simultaneously. Red Tour operators who time the stop for early morning or mid-afternoon give their guests a substantially quieter and more personal experience.
• Zelve Open Air Museum: Wearing comfortable shoes at Zelve is not optional advice but a practical necessity: the carved stone floors rise and fall unpredictably, the paths between cave rooms include uneven steps, and the passages between valleys narrow in places. The site rewards slow, careful movement rather than a quick walk-through.
• Uchisar Castle (exterior view): In morning mist, Uchisar Castle emerges from the surrounding valley haze in a way that explains why early European travelers described Cappadocia as a landscape from another world. The castle rock's height means it clears the mist before the valley below does, creating an island-above-clouds effect that photographs dramatically.

17:00 - The Cappadocia North 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 first touring area.

• Red Valley: Few landscapes in Cappadocia feel as genuinely remote as Red Valley, where the only sounds on a quiet morning are wind and the crunch of gravel underfoot. The valley's distinctive color comes from iron-rich minerals in the volcanic tuff, which oxidize in direct sunlight and shift shade as clouds pass overhead.
• Rose Valley (Gulludere Valley): Morning mist sometimes pools in the bottom of Rose Valley overnight and clings to the lower cliff faces until mid-morning, creating an atmospheric haze that softens the canyon scenery. Travelers who reach the valley early on misty mornings describe the experience as otherworldly, with rock formations emerging gradually from a pale grey background.
• Cavusin Village: Cappadocia's population of rock-cut settlements was at its largest during the Byzantine period, and Cavusin was among the most developed of these communities based on the scale of carving visible today. Researchers estimate that the cliff settlement housed several hundred people at its peak, with rooms stacked across multiple tiers inside the rock face.
• Pigeon Valley: Walking through Pigeon Valley in opposite directions produces genuinely different experiences, since the angle of light on carved cliff faces changes completely and different sections of canyon come into focus first. Guides familiar with the valley often recommend walking east to west in the afternoon to keep the best-lit cliff faces ahead of you rather than behind.
• Underground City: Massive stone rolling doors inside Cappadocia's underground city were engineered with a central hole for a locking bar and rolled on a carved groove in the tunnel floor, stopping flush against the passage wall with no gap for leverage. Invaders who reached a sealed door from outside had no practical way to open it, giving the communities inside time to retreat deeper into the tunnel system.

17:00 - The Cappadocia South Tour ends.

Transfer back to your hotel in Cappadocia.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia

Meal: Breakfast

Pick up from your hotel in Cappadocia. (Pickup time and airport may change.)

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 airport and time may change according to availability.)

Meet our team after landing.

Transfer to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

The rest of the day is free to explore Kusadasi at your own pace.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:00 - Pick up from your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Drive toward Pamukkale.

• Pamukkale: Pamukkale means 'Cotton Castle' in Turkish, and the name fits perfectly. Warm calcium-laden water has been spilling down this hillside for thousands of years, leaving behind brilliant white travertine formations that look like frozen waterfalls. It is one of the most photographed natural wonders in all of Turkey.
• White Calcium Terraces: At Pamukkale's calcium terraces, the temperature surprise catches most visitors off guard, the water is warm, not cold. Thermal springs feed the pools at a consistent temperature, so stepping in feels more like a spa than a mountain stream. The white travertine surface surrounds each pool in a natural barrier of brilliant calcium deposits that took millennia to build.
• Hierapolis Ancient City: Founded over two thousand years ago above Pamukkale's thermal springs, Hierapolis became famous across the ancient Mediterranean world for its healing waters. Wealthy Romans retired here, merchants set up trade networks through the city, and pilgrims arrived from distant provinces seeking cures. The prosperity of those centuries is visible in the scale of what remains: a theater, temples, baths, and kilometers of paved streets.
• Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool: At 36 degrees Celsius, the mineral water in Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool is comfortable in every season. The pool's floor is scattered with marble column drums and architectural fragments from an ancient Roman building destroyed by earthquake. Whether Cleopatra actually bathed here is a matter of legend, but the pool is genuinely ancient and genuinely relaxing, the pool area can be visited without an extra entrance fee; swimming is optional and payable on-site.

16:00 - The Pamukkale and Hierapolis tour ends.

Transfer back to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:30 - Pick up from your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Transfer to the Ephesus site entrance.

• Ephesus Ancient City: Few ancient cities anywhere preserve their street network as completely as Ephesus, you can trace entire blocks, identify residential quarters, and follow the logic of urban planning laid down two thousand years ago. The marble-paved main road even preserves ruts left by cart wheels in the ancient city's busiest centuries. Details like that make history concrete in a way no textbook can replicate.
• House of Virgin Mary: Archaeologists have confirmed that the foundation stones of the House of Virgin Mary date to the first century, lending physical credibility to the traditions that place Mary here during her final years. That ancient stone beneath your feet connects you to the very earliest period of Christian history in Anatolia. For visitors interested in early Christianity, this site carries weight that no amount of later reconstruction can diminish.
• Temple of Artemis: Visitors who arrive at the Temple of Artemis site expecting to see dramatic ruins sometimes feel surprised by the modest reality of one reconstructed column in an open field. But that first impression quickly gives way to something more interesting once a guide explains what the field represents, the footprint of a building that defined an entire era of ancient architecture. Seeing nothing can be as powerful as seeing everything, when the story is told well.

17:00 - The full day Ephesus tour ends.

Transfer back to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk

Meal: Breakfast

Pick up from your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk. (Pickup time and airport may change.)

Transfer to the airport.

Flight from Izmir to Istanbul. (Flight time may change.)

Arrival at Istanbul Airport or Sabiha Gokcen Airport. (Arrival airport and time may change according to availability.)

Meet our team after landing.

Transfer to your hotel in Istanbul.

The evening is free to revisit a favourite neighbourhood or relax before your final day.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Breakfast

According to your international flight details, you will be picked up from your hotel in Istanbul.

Transfer to Istanbul Airport (IST) or Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW) for your departure flight.

Your tour ends here.