Please Help With Trip to Turkey
 

We are considering taking an Odyssey Tour to Turkey next year. This includes 5 days sailing the Turquoise Coast. Has anyone ever traveled with Odyssey Tours? How is the food and water in Turkey? Are credit cards accepted most places? Finally, did you purchase your visa upon entry to the country.

I can answer at least a few of your questions, as I was in Istanbul and Izmir in late 2003.

You do normally buy your visa upon entry. I've heard that they've reduced the cost from $100 for a 90-day visa to somewhere around $20, which is nice.

The food in Turkey is wonderful...It reminded me a bit of Greek food, only with more spices. Kabobs are popular, and overall I enjoyed Turkish food the most of a long trip across Europe.

I didn't drink water from a tap, but used it to brush my teeth. I'd suggest getting a current guidebook and see what kind of information there is about the water. I think it depends on where you are as to whether it's safe to drink from the tap. Bottled water is everywhere anyway.

Credit cards are taken in a lot of places, but you'll need cash for street vendors and the like. I don't think Turkey has converted to the Euro yet, but they WILL try to get you to pay in Euro or even US Dollars because of the lack of value to the Turkish Lira, and you'll lose a lot of money in unfair exchanges that way. The best thing to do would be to pull cash from an ATM, as it will give you the best conversion rate.

I don't have any experience with tours, so others will have to answer those. I will say in my week-plus time in Turkey, we found the people to be very friendly and interested in talking with us, and the food and accommodations to be wonderful at a good price.

Happy travels,

Jules

Aren't you lucky that I just came back from Istanbul and surrounding area. My trip reports can be found on this forum. Just click on my sn Thingorjus (in blue) and they will pop up.

Yes, you can purchase your visa at the airport in Istanbul. It is to the left of Passport Control. It only took us 5 minutes to get our visas.

My mother took a tour of Turkey a few years ago. She went with Brendan Tours and said it was one of the best tours she ever took. SHE LOVED IT.

Turkey is safe, and the police presence is heavy.

You can buy your visa only on entry to the country. As others say, it is easy.

As in many countries, you loose if you buy things with credit cards. What I do is draw cash at an ATM, and pay in cash.

While balaklava and other honeyed sweetmeats are good in Turkey, the restaurants fail to exploit the good fruit of the country, so you could on your first day visit an open air fruit market (a beautiful thing to see), take your purchases in a plastic bag inside another plastic bag to your hotel room or cabin, ask for a large bowl (or just pop into the dining room and borrow one), and have in your room a running buffet of fruit for afters. Some hotels serve vanilla ice cream for desert. Here you can painlessly bring your fruit bowl to the table, or a small bowl of fruit, and eat, for example, peaches and ice cream. If you find a sweet white wine (and I think most Turkish whites are sweet) you can have that with your afters. If you find that your ship has no wine you like you can carry a corkscrew from home, buy what you like in a grocers shop (and it is cheap), and drink it in your cabin or room.

Ben Haines, London
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Great advice,Fodorites.I'm tucking it away for my 32- hour layover in October!

Turkey was a wonderful place to visit! My husband had a knee injury & didn't get to go, but I went on the tour anyway. I didn't want to use a credit card there, so I got local cash from the ATM. Also, at the end of my trip I used a travelers check to help pay for a beautiful stone tile. The people I came in contact were very nice & friendly in nearly all cases, especially when I got lost after missing my bus stop for Topkopi! Drink bottled water and enjoy the food.