Turkey

This is the paradox to plan around. A casual meal is well under €10, a local beer €3–5, and hotels and transport are cheap — Turkey’s weak lira and high inflation make daily spending a bargain for anyone earning foreign currency. But the marquee monuments are deliberately priced in euros at rich-world rates: Hagia Sophia’s visiting gallery €25, Ephesus €40, Pamukkale €30, Topkapi around €45. So the sticker shock isn’t the country — it’s the tickets, and you should budget for them separately. One more inflation note: any lira price you read online goes stale within months, so sanity-check against the current rate (around 48 lira to the dollar).

April–May and September–October are the sweet spots nationwide — 18–25°C, wildflowers in spring, prices 20–30% below summer. The Aegean and Mediterranean coast (Bodrum, Antalya, Fethiye) peaks in a hot July–August; Istanbul runs year-round, cold and grey but fully functional in winter; and Cappadocia is at its most dramatic under winter snow, though that’s also when the balloons are least reliable. Ramadan (roughly mid-February to mid-March in 2026) barely affects secular tourist areas — restaurants, bars and alcohol stay open — but expect busier iftar dining and higher domestic-travel prices around it and the Eid holidays.

Istanbul to Cappadocia is around 750 km, to the Aegean coast 500-plus — so domestic flights (Turkish Airlines, Pegasus, AJet) do the heavy lifting, often €30–60 one-way and about an hour and a half. A caution on Istanbul’s two airports: the main IST on the European side and low-cost SAW on the Asian side are 1.5–2 hours apart across the city, so never book a tight self-transfer between them. Within Istanbul, an Istanbulkart covers the metro, trams and the Bosphorus ferries (which double as a cheap sightseeing cruise); the intercity coaches are excellent and cheap; and a car earns its keep only for Cappadocia’s spread-out valleys and the Turquoise coast.

Istanbul straddles two continents: Hagia Sophia (a working mosque since 2020 — free on the ground floor, €25 for the upper gallery), the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, the Grand Bazaar and the Bosphorus. Cappadocia is the lunar valley of fairy chimneys, cave hotels in Göreme, and the sunrise balloons. Ephesus, near Selçuk, is one of the best-preserved Greco-Roman cities in the Mediterranean, and Pamukkale stacks white travertine terraces over the ancient spa city of Hierapolis.

The coast is the beach half of the trip: Bodrum, Fethiye and Ölüdeniz on the Aegean and Turquoise coasts, where a wooden-gulet “blue cruise” is the signature experience, and Antalya’s Mediterranean resorts and ruins. A Museum Pass Türkiye (€165 for 15 days) covers most state sites — but not Hagia Sophia’s ticket or the Basilica Cistern — and only pays off on a busy itinerary.

Turkey is constitutionally secular but Muslim-majority: alcohol is legal but heavily taxed (so pricey against the cheap food), and mosques require modest dress — women cover their hair, everyone removes shoes. Plugs are European Type C/F at 230V, tap water is treated but best avoided for drinking (bottled is very cheap), and bargaining is expected in the bazaars. It’s generally very safe for tourists — the one region to avoid is the south-eastern Syrian border. The real nuisance is Istanbul’s scams: the “dropped” shoeshine brush, the friendly stranger who invites you for a drink that ends in a €500-plus bill, the over-helpful guide who steers you to a carpet shop, and restaurants that pad the bill or quote in euros at ten times the lira value — check the menu currency and your total.