Turkey

This is the paradox to plan around. A casual meal is well under €10, a local beer €4–7, and hotels and transport are cheap — Turkey’s weak lira and high inflation make daily spending a bargain for anyone earning foreign currency. The one everyday exception is alcohol: it’s legal but heavily taxed, with the duty raised again in January 2026, so a drink costs far more than the food beside it.

The real sticker shock isn’t the country — it’s the tickets. The marquee monuments are deliberately priced in euros at rich-world rates, insulated from the lira, so budget for them separately. Any lira price you read online goes stale within months, so sanity-check against the current rate (around 49.5 lira to the dollar in late 2026).

A Museum Pass only pays off on a busy itinerary — do the maths against the handful of sights you’ll actually enter, and buy from the official Ministry channels, not the lookalike resellers that bundle in a marked-up “Hagia Sophia + Cistern” the real pass doesn’t cover.

April–May and September–October are the sweet spots nationwide — 18–25°C inland, warmer on the coast, prices 20–30% below summer. The Aegean and Mediterranean coast (Bodrum, Antalya, Fethiye) peaks in a hot July–August, with the sea swimmable from mid-May to late October; 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.

The Islamic calendar shifts about eleven days earlier each year, so for 2027 Ramadan falls roughly 8 February to 9 March and the big Kurban Bayramı (Eid al-Adha) holiday around 16–17 May. Ramadan barely affects secular tourist areas, but domestic travel and prices spike hard around the Eid holidays — book transport ahead if your trip overlaps.

Within Istanbul, an Istanbulkart (single ride about 46 lira, under a euro) covers the metro, trams, funiculars, Marmaray and the Bosphorus ferries — which double as a cheap sightseeing cruise. A hire car earns its keep only for Cappadocia’s spread-out valleys and the Turquoise coast; in the cities it’s a liability.

Mind Istanbul’s two airports. The main IST on the European side and low-cost SAW (Sabiha Gökçen) on the Asian side are 80–90 km apart — 60–120 minutes by transfer, longer by public bus — so never book a tight self-transfer between them. Leave at least four hours if you must connect across the city.

Hagia Sophia has been a working mosque again since 2020: the ground-floor prayer hall is free (modest dress, hair covered for women, shoes off), while tourists pay €25 for the upper gallery. A major dome restoration is under way, but the building stays open. Around it sit the Blue Mosque (free, an active mosque), Topkapı Palace with its Harem, the Grand Bazaar, and the subterranean Basilica Cistern with its upturned Medusa heads.

The Bosphorus is the other half of the city — the commuter ferries between the European and Asian shores are the best-value cruise in Istanbul, and the Asian side (Kadıköy, Üsküdar) is where the city feels most lived-in. Give Istanbul three days minimum; it’s a destination, not a stopover.

Cappadocia is the lunar valley of fairy chimneys: cave hotels in Göreme, the rock-cut churches of the Göreme Open-Air Museum, and the underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı where whole communities once sheltered. On the west coast, Ephesus near Selçuk is one of the best-preserved Greco-Roman cities in the Mediterranean — the Library of Celsus, a 25,000-seat theatre, and the frescoed Terrace Houses — 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 paragliders launch off Babadağ over the Blue Lagoon, and Antalya’s Mediterranean resorts, the Kaleiçi old town and ruins like the near-intact theatre at Aspendos.

The visa map changed recently in travellers’ favour: Canada became visa-free in 2023 and Australia in 2026, so both now enter like US, UK and EU citizens — no e-Visa to buy. The one holdout to watch is the Republic of Cyprus, whose citizens lost on-arrival entry in January 2026 and now need a visa in advance; ignore older pages that still list Canada and Australia as e-Visa countries.

Because Turkey is neither in the EU nor in Schengen, a stay here is a clean break from the Schengen 90/180 clock — useful if you’re stringing together a longer European trip. Just keep the passport rule in mind: validity of 60 days beyond your permitted stay, roughly 150 days for a full 90-day visit.

Turkey is constitutionally secular but Muslim-majority: mosques require modest dress — women cover their hair, everyone removes shoes and covers shoulders and knees, with scarves usually lent at the big mosques. 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 but not in fixed-price shops. Tipping is around 10% in restaurants, in cash — and the glass of çay you’ll be offered is hospitality, not a sales tactic.

• A friendly stranger invites you for a drink (İstiklal / Beyoğlu)Skipthe bar he picks — the “rounds” end in a €200–500 bill with bouncers at the doorGochoosing the venue yourself, or declining; anyone who approaches you first wants something
• A taxi won’t run the meter or takes “the scenic route”Skiphailing on the street at the tourist spotsGothe BiTaksi app (or an Uber-dispatched taxi), which fixes the fare and the route
• A “dropped” shoeshine brush, or a guide steering you to a carpet shopSkipthe helpful follow-up — it ends at a commission saleGoa smile and a no; buy a carpet only if you actually want one, and bargain hard

It’s generally very safe for tourists; the one region to avoid is the far south-east within about 10 km of the Syrian border, so check your government’s current advisory before any eastern travel. The real nuisance is Istanbul’s scams, covered above — and restaurants that quote in euros at a bad rate or pad the bill, so check the menu currency and your total. Weighing Turkey against its obvious rival? See Greece vs Turkey, measured.