Aegean Region itinerary - what do you think?
 

Hello,

we are 2 families travelling to Turkey and Greece (each one with two kids, girls and boys from 9 to 14 years old), and are wondering if our tentative itinerary makes sense to you.
None of us has been in Turkey before.

I'll begin with the Aegean Region itinerary and ask about the rest of the itinerary in future posts:

May 6th:
- fly to Izmir, arrive in the early morning,
- take the car (either rental car or private tour, we have to check costs and convenience)
- Stay at Izmir for 30 min / 1 hour
- Drive to Cesme (1 hour drive) get to know the town (Cesme Castle + strolling = 2 hours?)
Hotel in Alacati (Cesme) for one night - I was thinking it would be better to sleep in Izmir, it would make more sense to take a city as base. Though, searching hotels in booking.com I found nicer places in Alacati. What do you think?

May 7th
- Leave Alcati or Izmir, depending on where we slept
- drive to Cesme (1 hour or some minutes)
- Take the ferry to Chios for a day excursion Ferry departs at 9:30 am and arrives to Chios at 10:30 am. Leaves Chios at 6 pm and arrives to Cesme at 7 pm.
- Dinner and sleep at selected base town (either Alacati or Izmir … would it make sense to make it Ephesus?)

May 8th
- Alacati: depart at around 8:30 am
- drive 1h30 to Ephesus
- Ephesus: sightseeing (theater and library + square + curetes street) – is that enough 3-4 hours?
- drive to Afrodisias 2h30 and sleep there

May 9th
- Afrodisias: visit museum + ruins (2 hrs?)
- drive 1:30 to Herapolis + Pamukkale
- lunch
- visit Pamukkale + Herapolis (2hrs):
- drive to Denizli Cardan airport to leave the car and fly back to Istanbul (any other airport that is good to drive from Pamukkale? We would love to have an airport that has direct flights to Cappadocia (or do we have to go back to Istanbul).

So, my main questions are:
1) Base town should be Alacati? Ephesus? Selcuk? Izmir?
2) We would like to go to a greek island. would it be better to go to a) Cesme and Chios or b) Kusadasi and Samos
3) the final airport Denizli Cardan doesn't seem to have as many flights as the Izmir airport. Would it be better to do the trip backwards?
4) Are the estimated times per attraction / town reasonable? Or should we take more / less time per place?

Thanks for your help,
Barbara
PS. the rest of the itinerary is:
3/5-5/5: Istanbul
6-9: Aegean Region (flight early morning to Izmir, return by plane too)
10-11: Athens or Cappadocia
11: Madrid flight to Lima

Do you want to fly from Izmir via Istanbul to Athens?
it would save time and money if you visited Chios or Samos on your way from Izmir/Cesme/Kusadasi to Athens.
Chios is not better or worse than Samos, but just completely different. Only you know what you are looking for, therefore only you can make a choice.

What about:

May 6th: rent a car at the airport and drive to a beach hotel around Kusadasi or to a hotel at Selcuk. Visit Ephesos

May 7th: daytrip to Afrodisias - Pamukkale and back

May 8th: leave Kusadasi at 9am by ferry to Samos ar 10am. Visit the archeological places of Pythagorion and spend late afernoon at the Psili Ammos beach. Sleep at Phatagorion.

May 9th: Leave Pythagorion by plane 7.35am to Athens ar 8.30.

May 11th: Leave Athens 22.20 by plane to Barcelona ar 0.25 (100 EUR).

1. Some of what you wrote are impossible :

- staying in Izmir and using it as a base for other places like Cesme, Chios or Ephesus. Izmir is a large city with heavy traffic and getting in and out of the city would waste hours while the decent hotels in the city are rather expensive standard business hotels.

- Aphrodisias is in the middle of nowhere. There is no lodging in the area, so you cannot overnight there.


I have no right to say what you should do but I find your itinerary very tiring for the whole group. I would not try to visit so many places in so few days. You are likely to be "ruined out" as another Fodorite wrote.

If you do Cesme-Alacati-Chios, you probably should leave Aphrodisias and Pamukkale or at least one of them out.

Alacati is a good choice. It has some terrific boutique hotels, great beaches and some lovely bars and cafes for the nights, a huge Sunday street market (possibly one other day also)
My daughter was married there last Summer and our party stayed at Chigdem, Beyaz Han, Degirmen boutique hotels. The wedding took place at the expensive Solto Hotel (on the beach) which had major management issues.

I know, paper stands every plan, and plan can be weird. That's why I love Fodors and you Fodorites! Your help me get back down to earth :-)

neckervd, my family arrives three days before to Madrid, so we could do either Athens or Cappadocia or stay more days in Istanbul until May 3rd, when we meet our friends. We want to have a little bit of Greece (I know, I get too ambitious, once I'm planning all common sense goes away, and I feel the urge to get to know everything). It could be Athens or one of the little islands close to the places we visit in Turkey.
Thanks for the tip on how to get Athens without passing Istanbul again!

otherchelebi, thanks for the info on Izmir and Afrodisias. I would really like to go to Pamukkale, but no one in my group will want to drive 4 hours from Ephesus, stay for a couple of hours and then drive 2 more hours to the Denzali airport (by the way I don't know if it is a good airport, and if it has several options of flights, I found two or three per day, but to avoid delays, maybe we should arrive to that airport, and drive to Izmir (the other way around).

I'll go on with the research and trip planning. bye, thanks.

"I know, I get too ambitious, once I'm planning all common sense goes away, and I feel the urge to get to know everything"

Know that feeling, happens to me all the time:) But as otherchelebi says its very easy to get "ruined out", this is what happened to DH when we were in Turkey last month and he absolutely refused to go to Aspendos, his loss IMO.

There are early morning flights out of Attaturk to Denizli, you could rent a car and drive to Pamukkale, see the travertines in the morning and drive on to Ephesus/Selcuk in the afternoon. Depending on time and inclination you could also stop off at Aphrodisias enroute. Its my understanding that only Turkish Airlines flies into Denizli, but I may be wrong, the experts like OC will know. I do know that there aren't too many flights in and out of that airport, but you should easily be able to find something suitable, many people do Pamukkale as a day trip out of Istanbul.

Geetika has the best solution:
morning flight from Istanbul to Denizli, visit PamukKale and Afrodisias, sleep 2 nights at Selcuk/Kusadasi and go on to Samos - Athens....

Sounds great!
One question,do you know good companies whom to rent a car in Denizli?
I entered the denizli airport web page, and it sent me to Denizli Europcar, the most known to me, it{s a difficult page.
I entered the main Europcar page, and they quoted a van for 8 for 708 dollars for 4 days.
The Denizli´s airport´s hire car web pages don´t reach Izmir Airport.

Maybe I´m at the moment I need a travel agency

Consider arranging your rental car through gemut.com

No need for a travel agency.

We had the same problem finding a rental car at Denizli, the only quote we got was way too high. But luckily it didn't really matter very much to us since we were only staying at Pamukkale, our hotel arranged for us an airport transfer.

kja, thanks for the suggestion....Though, I got the quote from gemut.com and it was similar from the one from Europcar (around 450 rental charge + 400 drop charge or sth like that).

So, now I´m thinking about either

1) arriving to Denizli, get an excursion to Pamukkale and Herapolis from the airport (or a cab to Pamukkale and then to Herapolis), and then a bus / train / cab to Kusadasi... then rent a car in Kusadasi (drop charges have to be lower ... they are around 400 dollars for Pamukkale-Izmir)

2) arrive to Izmir, do the trip up to Kusadasi and then take a guided tour to Pamukkale and Herapolis

Would you give me some ideas on where to research guided tours prices and public transportation prices?
Alternative 2 looks easier in terms of logistics and is probably less expensive, what do you think?

Just for background, you might want to check out the recent trip report on Lonely Planet Thorntree about a visit to Istanbul/Chios/Lesbos/Samos. Might be food for thought.

Smyrna has been utterly destroyed when the Turks annexed Ionia from Greece in 1922. The old town has been utterly destroyed and it has lost its charm as a city. So I would not recommend you to stay many days in there.

Smyrna was officially a part of Greece between 1920 (Treaty of Sevres) and 1922. Before and afterwards it was Turkish. But until 1922, almost the whole population was Greek and Armenian; the Turkish part was about 15 per cent.

Thanks for the input neckervd.

One other correction :

There was neither a "Turkey" nor an "Ionia" in the area for two thousand years.

The city states which were loosely called Ionia disappeared with the Romans, were then governed by the Byzantines, fell under Seljukis and then some Turkic tribes and finally Ottomans.

The Ottomans almost denied their Turkic origins within a few generations and certainly by the time they conquered Byzantium.
They liked to be thought of as the Eastern Roman Empire and preferred the name Constantinopolis for Istanbul.

There was no official treaty of Sevres because it was never promulgated. However, the allies invaded parts of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, including a large Greek army invading Smyrna and inland from there.

A leader who was born in Thessalonika from a possibly Turkish background, gathered an Anatolian army of Moslem Anatolian subjects of the Ottoman Empire and fought the invading British, French, Italians and Greeks to establish what is Turkey now. He was a military and political genius and managed to get aid from former enemy, a war-torn Russia also.

The establishment of modern Turkey was dramatic and tragic for many people. There were forced migrations of Christians, including Christian Turks from Anatolia to Greece and the Balkans and Moslems from the Balkans to Anatolia whether they were Turkish or not. Altogether, possibly three million or more people were displaced and forced to survive under circumstances totally alien to themselves.

Some good novels on those events include "Birds Without Wings"

Unfortunately, Anatolia or "Asia Minor" has witnessed incredible atrocities between tens of civilizations, races, cultures and city states for all of known history.

Another good book to read before visiting can be Gore Vidal's "Creation" (I recommend the earlier abridged version) which is a delightful novel of the period of Persian-Greek wars, also satisfying the readers' curiosity on India and China of the time.

Regular people like us, usually subjects (definitely not citizens) of past and present empires are the ones who suffer no matter what the ethnic and/or religious background is. We should not fall into the trap of identifying with the ethnic, religious, nationalistic propaganda and myths used to brain wash subject peoples of occupied territories used to justify the existence and role of the rulers.

bqycc, you may like to contact Mislina Travel in Pamukkale, they arranged our airport pick-up and tour to Aphrodisias, they are also agents for the Pamukkale bus company. They speak English and should be able to give you prices for your different options.

Isa Durmy, Manager
+90 258 272 3434 [email protected]

Yes, The Destruction of Smyrna and the Greek Genocide is one of the saddest events in History. The Greek Element in Asia Minor which stood there from 900 BC till 1922 AD (2822 years) has been extinguished in just a year, 3 millenia of History. Millions of Minor Asians have been deported to Greece knowing that their homeland has been lost forever. There are thousands of Stories, Documentaries and Songs on these events. The only positive is that they enriched the Greeks of the West and the Islands with so much unique culture, in Gastronomy, Traditions, and so many other things. This is a typical Smyrniot mourning song which is interesting to hear http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hq7fSxjQPiE

This may be Fodor's but I think that you must know a couple thinks for the place you are visiting.

Everything above is correct, of course. But don't forget that there would have been no Turkish occupation of Smyrna if the (rather weak) Greek Army wouldn't have entered into Anatolia hundreds of miles beyond the predominantly Greek speaking coastal area (up to Inonu where they were annihilated by the Turkish General Mustapha Ismet) without organizing adequate supply logistics.

PetrosB3,

This is not a valid platform for prejudiced nationalistic, ethnic or xenophobic hate posts.

Many peoples in Asia Minor and the Balkans have been exiled, banished, treated badly, pillaged, ravaged, even exterminated by other residents and non residents in the course of history.

The people of modern Turkey have little or as much to do with those who lived here in the past as the people of Greece have with the Ionians, Lydians, Frigians, Lykians, Karians, Bithynians and even the Persians, Hittites, Assyrians, etc. (each of which conducted atrocities against each other as well as others while suffering from other nomadic migrations)

The only event in the last 130 years which may be likened to genocide in Asia Minor was what befell the Armenians.

Unfortunately, no proportion of the population of Asia Minor never called themselves Greeks even in the Classical times. There were Athenians, Spartans, etc. and then the provinces which were mostly named after tribes or by Alexander or by the Romans who came afterwards.

The label "Greek" came into being with the advent of "Nationalism" and the apt glorification of the area and culture which left possibly the most significant heritage to modern thought, science and literature.

Modern Greeks have little ethnic relationship to classical Athenians or Spartans just as Italians do not to Etruscans or Turks to the hordes of Attilla or Ghengiz Khan. I believe that it is a fruitless and futile endeavor to try to gain importance through one's real or imaginary ancestors.

I deeply apologize for this probably totally unnecessary "lecture"

Please enjoy yourselves wherever you travel in the world without thinking of the blood and tears that the former inhabitants shed and attempting to bear part of that burden or blaming others in a fit of sinful vendetta.

"no proportion of the population of Asia Minor never called themselves Greeks even in the Classical times".

Of course. and as the lingua franca at these times was Greek, it's sometimes difficult to find out who really spoke Greek as his mother tongue.

But one century ago, things were easier. People speaking Greek and exercising the Greek Orthodox religion were considered as Greeks and Turkish speaking Muslims were considered as Turks. Many villages (on the mainland as well as on the Islands) were mixed.

Under such cimcumstances, it's always impossible to fix "just and reasonable" borders between 2 countries. The solution lies in a National consensus, in a mutual respect of each culture, in a protection of the language and culture of minorities and in some cultural and political local authonomy. All things where neither the Greek nor the Turkish nor the Cypriot Governments were champions in the 20th Century.