10 Days Istanbul, Ephesus, Pamukkale, Antalya, Cappadocia 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 time to rest after your journey.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Breakfast

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

09:00 - Guided walking tour of Istanbul's old city begins.

• Hagia Sophia: Built in 537 AD, Hagia Sophia served first as a cathedral, then as an Ottoman mosque, and now as an active place of worship, a single building that carries more than fifteen centuries of religious and architectural history. Its vast interior dome and golden mosaics make it one of the most visually striking interiors in the world.
• Blue Mosque: It stands directly opposite Hagia Sophia and is recognized by its six minarets, an unusual feature for an imperial Ottoman mosque. The interior is lined with over twenty thousand blue Iznik tiles, giving the space a cool, luminous quality that contrasts with the drama outside.
• Hippodrome: It was the civic heart of Byzantine Constantinople and could hold up to one hundred thousand spectators for chariot races. Three ancient monuments still stand here, the Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpent Column, and the Column of Constantine, each brought from a different corner of the ancient world.
• Bosphorus Cruise: A short cruise on the Bosphorus gives you the clearest view of Istanbul as a two-continent city, with waterfront palaces on the European side and forested hillsides on the Asian shore visible in the same frame. It reframes everything you saw on foot into a single broad perspective.

16:00 - City tour ends. Transfer back to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Lunch

05:00 ─ You will be picked up from your hotels.

You will be transferred to the airport in Istanbul.

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

08:10 - Arrival at the Izmir Airport. (Arrival airport and time may change according to availability.)

Upon your arrival, you will be transferred to Ephesus Ancient City.

• Ephesus Ancient City: Walk into one of the most complete ancient cities ever excavated, Ephesus rewards every step with marble streets, carved facades, and monuments that have stood for two thousand years. The Library of Celsus alone draws gasps from first-time visitors, its two-story columns rising dramatically at the end of Curetes Street. Few Roman sites anywhere in the world deliver this level of scale and detail in a single visit.
• House of Virgin Mary: Pilgrims have climbed Bulbul Mountain to visit this site since the 19th century, when a German nun's vision led to the rediscovery of the small stone house where Mary is believed to have lived. Three different popes have visited in person, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, giving the site a recognition that spans both Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Standing at the altar, that long history of veneration becomes tangible.
• Temple of Artemis: Coins minted in Ephesus during the Roman era depicted the Temple of Artemis on their face, reflecting how central the structure was to the city's identity and economy. Pilgrims came from across the Mediterranean to worship at the sanctuary, and the temple complex included treasuries, altars, and accommodation for visitors at a scale that rivaled modern religious sites. Near Selcuk today, a single column marks where all of that once stood.

16:00 ─ The Ephesus tour ends.

You will be transferred to your hotel in Kusadasi/Selcuk.

Overnight stay in Kusadasi/Selcuk

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:00 - Breakfast, hotel check-out, and departure for the day program.

• Pamukkale: Tucked in the Denizli province of southwestern Turkey, Pamukkale sits where ancient Romans once built an entire spa city. Thermal springs rich in calcium carbonate have slowly sculpted a dazzling white hillside over thousands of years. Today it draws visitors from every corner of the world who want to see those famous terraces up close.
• White Calcium Terraces: Water that has traveled underground for thousands of years emerges at Pamukkale warm and rich in dissolved minerals. As it flows across the broad hillside ledges and cools, calcium carbonate precipitates out and slowly builds the white travertine surface. The terraces you walk on today are the same ones Romans knew, with two thousand more years of mineral deposits added on top.
• Hierapolis Ancient City: Walking through the necropolis at Hierapolis, you pass tomb types from several different eras: simple pit graves from the Hellenistic period, elaborate Roman-era sarcophagi with carved inscriptions, and later barrel-vaulted structures from Byzantine times. The variety of burial styles across two kilometers of hillside tells the story of a city that lived, changed, and accumulated its dead for over a thousand years above Pamukkale.
• Cleopatra Antique Thermal Pool: It is part of the Hierapolis archaeological area above Pamukkale. Entry to the pool area is free; swimming in the thermal pool is optional and payable on-site. Warm mineral water and submerged Roman columns make it a memorable add-on if you would like to swim.

16:00 ─ The Pamukkale tour ends.

Transfer to the bus station.

17:30 ─ You will have a bus trip to Antalya.

21:00 ─ Arrival at Antalya Bus Station.

Upon your arrival at the bus station, we will transfer you to the hotel in Antalya.

Overnight stay in Antalya

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

08:00 ─ After the breakfast at the hotel, our staff will come for picking you up.

Transfer to the first touring area and meet your guide.

• Perge Ancient City: Perge was one of the most prosperous cities in ancient Pamphylia and gives you a different Roman experience from Ephesus, wider streets, larger thermal baths, and a more open, sunlit setting with the Taurus Mountains visible behind. Its colonnaded main avenue is one of the most intact in Turkey.
• Aspendos Ancient City: The theatre at Aspendos is the best-preserved Roman theatre in the world still actively used for performances, with upper tiers and stage building standing almost completely to their original height. The quality of the stonework and the acoustics make it a genuinely moving stop, not just a ruin to photograph.
• Side Ancient City: Side occupies a compact peninsula with temples, colonnaded streets, and harbour ruins all within easy walking distance of each other. The combination of seaside atmosphere and layered archaeology makes it feel more alive than larger inland sites.
• Kursunlu Waterfall: The Kursunlu waterfall drops through a forested gorge into a clear pool and provides a natural counterweight to a day otherwise dominated by ancient stone. It is a short walk through shaded trees, making it a welcome pause before the evening transfer back to Antalya.

17:00, Transfer back to your hotel in Antalya.

Overnight stay in Antalya

Meal: Breakfast

Free time to explore on your own.

Overnight stay in Antalya

Meal: Breakfast

05:30 ─ We will pick you up from your hotel.

Transfer to the airport.

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

Arrival at Cappadocia Airport. (Arrival airport and time may change according to availability.)

Meet our team after landing and continue with your transfer.

Transfer to your hotel.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

09:30 ─ After the breakfast, you will be picked up and transferred to the north of Cappadocia tour area.

• Devrent Valley (Pink Valley): Standing in Devrent Valley in the early morning, the low light catches each rock column from a different angle and turns the plateau into something that feels genuinely surreal. Bring a wide-angle lens if you have one, because the scale of the valley rewards it.
• Pasabag Open Air Museum: Cappadocia has hundreds of fairy chimneys, but Pasabag's are distinctive for their multi-headed tops, which formed when erosion split the basalt cap into separate sections before wearing down the softer rock below. Single-capped chimneys are common; three-headed ones are rare even by Cappadocia's standards.
• Avanos Pottery Workshop: Avanos pottery has a strong local identity separate from the tourism industry, with pieces serving functional roles in Turkish homes as storage vessels, cookware, and tableware. That domestic market gives Avanos workshops an economic foundation that does not depend entirely on visitor sales.
• Goreme Panoramic View: Every visitor to Cappadocia forms a mental image of the landscape before arriving, usually built from photographs and travel content. Goreme Panoramic View is the moment when that mental image and the physical reality merge, and for most travelers the reality exceeds the expectation by a meaningful margin.
• Zelve Open Air Museum: Zelve's grain mills are among the least discussed but most interesting features of the site, with carved millstone tracks and storage channels still visible inside the rock. Seeing evidence of food production alongside religious and domestic spaces makes the village feel like a complete economy rather than just a settlement.
• Uchisar Castle (exterior view): Uchisar Castle's role as a visual anchor for the entire Cappadocia region is not an accident: its height and distinctive profile made it a navigational landmark for camel caravans crossing the plateau for centuries. Travelers arriving from the west knew they were entering Cappadocia when Uchisar Castle came into view.

17:00 ─ Cappadocia tour ends.

You will be transferred to your hotels.

Overnight stay in Cappadocia

Meal: Breakfast & Lunch

09:30 - Breakfast, hotel check-out, and departure for the day program.

• Red Valley: Early Christian settlers used Red Valley's natural rock formations as orientation points when traveling between cave settlements in ancient Cappadocia. Today the valley is valued primarily for its scenery, with sweeping views across orange ridgelines that extend toward the horizon in every direction.
• Rose Valley (Gulludere Valley): Rose Valley marks the transition zone between the heavier volcanic formations of the Goreme plateau and the gentler limestone canyons extending toward the Avanos basin to the north. This geological boundary gives Gulludere Valley a layered visual quality, with different rock types producing contrasting textures and colors across the same canyon wall.
• Cavusin Village: A carved cistern near the base of Cavusin's old village collected rainwater channeled from the cliff surface above, solving a critical water supply problem for a community living in porous volcanic rock. This infrastructure detail reveals the level of planning and engineering knowledge early Cavusin residents applied to the challenges of cliff habitation.
• Pigeon Valley: Its visual character is unlike any other canyon in Cappadocia, defined not by fairy chimneys or rock churches but by the sheer density of human intervention written into every meter of its cliff walls. More than any other single site on the Yellow Tour, Pigeon Valley shows how completely Cappadocia's landscape has been shaped by centuries of agricultural ingenuity.
• Underground City: Cappadocia's underground cities remained in active use across multiple centuries and multiple periods of threat, from early Byzantine-era raids through subsequent invasions, with each generation adding new rooms to the existing carved network. Different construction techniques visible in different sections of the underground city allow researchers to distinguish older original chambers from later expansions.

17:00 - The guided program ends and you are transferred to the airport.

20:40 - Flight from Cappadocia to Istanbul. (Flight time may change.)

21:00 - Arrival at Istanbul Airport. (Arrival airport and time may change according to availability.)

Meet our team after landing and continue with your transfer.

You will be transferred to the hotel in Istanbul.

Overnight stay in Istanbul

Meal: Breakfast

After breakfast and hotel check-out, you will be transferred to Istanbul Airport (IST) or Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW) according to your international flight details.

This final airport transfer marks the end of your 10-day Turkey tour services.

Your tour ends here.