Pricing
Departures: Throughout the year as a private journey.
Prices:
Per person sharing room from $8,490 for this 10-day sample itinerary
Internal air per person (estimate) $690
For more information, to book, or to speak to an R. Crusoe & Son tour specialist, please call us at 800-585-8555.
What Makes This Journey Best?
- Attend a whirling dervish ceremony followed by a Q&A in Cappadocia.
- Spend time in Istanbul’s Sadberk Hanim private collection of Ottoman treasures.
- Cruise the Bosphorus aboard a private boat.
- Take a tutorial on Turkish carpet weaving given by an expert.
- In Cappadocia, tour Kaymakli’s subterranean town.
- Visit a caravanserei in Agzikarahan.
- Tour escort stays with you throughout the journey
- Consider an easy-to-add Crusoe extension to Anatolian Turkey.
Local Flavor
Location. Location. Location. This is the story of Turkey. Where east meets west, Europe meets Asia, Islam meets Christianity, and where the world's oldest city was discovered. Alexander the Great was the first to meld eastern and western cultures. Many followed suit.
Across history, empires frequently changed hands in Turkey. The Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans all left their marks on this land. It is here that whirling dervishes spun themselves into trances in a mystical search for a spiritual union with God. Today, Turkey is a rich mosaic, a thriving democracy rich in Oriental history, European splendor, and marvelous mystery.
Turkey: Europe & Asia All at Once.
This is a 10-day sample itinerary. Remember that R. Crusoe can create a Turkey journey of any length to meet your exact specifications.
Take Istanbul as a model for all of Turkey. The Occident meets the Orient, true enough. But there's so much more—a lot of this and plenty of that. The Romans, for instance, urban planners par excellence, left behind an ingenious city. Ottoman sultans contributed great mosques and palaces (and other spots in which they tucked away their mothers, sisters, wives, concubines). The Byzantines built the ancient world’s mightiest churches and castles. (Aya Sofya beat St. Peter's by a millennium or so.)
Who can argue with using Istanbul as our jump-off point on this unique tour? Hippodrome Square, Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque, and so much more. Topkapi 
Palace, including the harem and the treasury. Dolmabahce Palace, a mishmash of European, Oriental, and Arabic style. Take an art history lesson at the Sadberk Hanim Museum, a wondrous private collection of antiquities and the best Ottoman heirlooms around. Take a private cruise along the Bosphorus.
Izmir is our gateway to Pergamum, yesterday’s Big Apple that rose to power as the Persian Empire crumbled (move over, Alexander the Great). At the Asclepion, perhaps the Western world’s first medical center, the scholar Galen sets up shop as a gladiators’ internist. We visit after our exploration of the acropolis, the library, the Temple of Trajan, and more.
Experience more history at nearby Ephesus, the best-preserved classical city on the eastern Mediterranean. Founded by the Greeks, overtaken by the Romans. The Library of Celsus here is a favorite of ours, built by a son in A.D. 110 to honor his father, the Roman governor Gaius Julius Celsus Polemaenus. Also here: the Basilica of St. John the Apostle, a lovely Roman Temple of Diana, the House of Mother Mary, where the Virgin Mary lived out her final days.
Ankara beckons. Welcome to Turkey’s capital city. Get a lesson on the Hittites at the world-famous Museum of Anatolian Civilization.
Then into Cappadocia, mysterious and surprising and once the seat of the Hittite Empire. Examine layers of authentic cities buried among “fairy chimneys” (volcanic rock columns that remind us of elf hats). Zelve boasts the best examples of fairy chimneys (they’ve been inhabited since at least the ninth century). The artisans of Avanos, a Bronze Age town, continue to turn out pottery from the local red clay. Its cave dwellings? Still occupied. Castles and fortresses and citadels await in the Guvercinlik Valley. There's a unique option to take a hot-air balloon ride to watch the sun rise over Cappadocia. The underground (literally) town of Kaymakli is a maze of caves,
tunnels, and subterranean rooms—these, too, still inhabited.
We suggest you stay in a luxurious and fascinating cave hotel to get a feel for life Cappadocia style.
Ever see a dervish, mid-whirl? You will. Speak with him after his hypnotic dance. Ask your questions, please. A very unusual opportunity.
Back to Istanbul, then, for your connecting flight home. Or connect to a flight to Antalya, if you’d like to see more of this extraordinary nation on R. Crusoe’s guided tour, Anatolian Turkey Extension.
To request a detailed itinerary for this journey (and others), click here.