Escorted Tours to Turkey, Istanbul and Cappadocia
Turkey sits across two continents and the joins show. In Istanbul a sixth-century Byzantine cathedral, an Ottoman sultan's palace and a busy tram line can all be within a few hundred yards of one another. Inland, in Cappadocia, whole churches and houses were cut into soft volcanic rock and are still standing.
Our Turkey holidays travel by air from the UK, with a guide and local transport once you arrive, so the navigating and the ticket queues are dealt with for you. The programme here is a short one, but both tours are built around proper time at the sights rather than a dash between them.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Turkey Tours
British passport holders can currently visit Turkey for short tourist stays without a visa, but the rules have changed more than once in recent years and Turkey also asks for a good stretch of validity left on your passport. Check the government's travel advice for Turkey on gov.uk before you book, and again nearer departure. If you hold a passport from another country, ask us and we will point you to the right guidance.
Not with us. The overland distance makes a driven holiday from Britain impractical, so our Turkey tours fly from the UK and use coach travel and a guide once you are there. Our Istanbul and Cappadocia holiday includes airport transfers in the UK and at the destination, plus the internal flights between Istanbul and Cappadocia. Ask us for the specific flight arrangements on the departure you are considering.
Shoulders and knees covered for everyone, a headscarf for women, and shoes off at the door. Scarves are usually available to borrow at the larger mosques, though many people prefer to carry their own, and slip-on shoes save a good deal of bother. Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque are working mosques and close to visitors at prayer times, particularly around midday on Fridays; your guide will plan around them.
More than on a typical British coach holiday. Istanbul's historic quarter is walked rather than driven, with cobbles, slopes and steps, and Topkapi Palace alone covers a lot of ground across its courtyards. In Cappadocia the valley paths are unpaved and uneven underfoot. Nothing is strenuous, but a reasonable level of mobility helps. Tell us about any concerns before booking and we will describe the specific days honestly.
Byzantine and Ottoman Istanbul
Hagia Sophia was completed in 537 for the emperor Justinian and served as the cathedral of Constantinople for some 900 years before becoming a mosque, then a museum, and a mosque again. Standing under that dome is the moment most people remember from a first visit to Turkey.
A short walk away, Topkapi Palace was the seat of the Ottoman sultans for nearly four centuries: not one grand building but a series of courtyards, kitchens, treasuries and tiled pavilions that grew as the empire did. Both appear on our Istanbul Tulip Festival tour, along with the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts and Beylerbeyi Palace on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.
Our longer holiday adds the Grand Bazaar, a day on Büyükada in the Princes' Islands, and a Bosphorus cruise at sunset, when the ferries and the mosque silhouettes do most of the work.
The rock valleys of Cappadocia
Cappadocia is the result of old volcanic eruptions laying down deep beds of soft tuff, which wind and water have since cut into cones, ridges and the tapering pillars usually called fairy chimneys. Because the rock is easy to carve but sets hard on exposure to air, people have been hollowing out homes, dovecotes, storerooms and churches here for well over a thousand years.
The Byzantine cave churches are the surprise. Behind unremarkable openings in the rock face are painted apses and vaulted ceilings, some with frescoes still legible. Underground settlements dug several levels deep were used as refuges in troubled centuries.
Our eight-day Istanbul and Cappadocia tour spends three nights in the region, with days in the northern and southern valleys and a dawn balloon flight available as an optional extra. Balloons only fly in settled conditions, so it is never a certainty.
Tulips and the Turkish spring
Tulips are not Dutch in origin. They grow wild across Central Asia and Anatolia, and were cultivated in the Ottoman world long before the first bulbs reached the Low Countries in the sixteenth century and set off the speculative mania there. In Turkey the flower became a decorative motif on tiles, textiles and manuscripts, and it remains a national symbol.
The early eighteenth century under Ahmed III is still known as the Tulip Era, a period of gardens, poetry and considerable extravagance. Istanbul revived the association in the 2000s, and each April the city's parks are planted with millions of bulbs, Emirgan Park on the Bosphorus among the best of them.
Our five-day tour is timed for the festival and pairs the gardens with a tile painting and contour drawing workshop, so you see where the motif came from as well as the flower itself.
