genoise

Are there some recommended small group tours to Turkey? OAT has one, but it looks like a lot of time spent on the bus. I looked at Road Scholar and National Geographic--are they small? They seem expensive, but if they're fabulous, I suppose they're worth considering.

kawh

all of our friends love rick steves tours. we did a r.s. tour of turkey... and it's such a big country that if you want to see a big variety (the coast, cities, cappadocia, etc) it will just mean a lot of driving. we were travelling on the bus a LOT and it didn't seem like too much. (and we don't usually take tours.)

having said that, below is a link to my brief review of the r.s. tour of turkey. we did not love it. however, i do believe that all tour-tours will be similar. many of the people on our tour had been on r.s. tours before, and remarked that the turkey tour was really (sadly) different in having so many business type hotels and bad lunches on the road.

http://www.fodors.com/community/euro...ess-hotels.cfm

we did run into some people who were on a 5-person personal adventure tour... (mountain bikes, kayaking, hiking, horseback riding at all of the various stops) and they were just loving it. i have the name of the guide in my journal. let me know if you want me to look it up.

kja

Are you fully committed to joining a tour? Turkey is quite easy to see independently.

Ozgirl07

Genoise I just did 2 trips GAdventures in Italy. There 5 of us in Cinque Terre and 9 in Sorrento. Loved it! Am looking into their Turkey tours for next year. A good friend has also recommended On the Go tours.

KTtravel

We went with Cappadocia Tours which for some reason also seems to be known as Euphrates Tours. They were able to customize a tour for us which, in theory, was a group tour but ended up being a private tour at a few of our stops as we went early in the season. This sounds confusing but at each of our stops (we flew from Istanbul to Cappadocia and then to the Ephesus area) we were met by a new tour guide. Our tour guide in Cappadocia was superb, the rest were good.

kbg3511

I recommend calling .
[email protected]
Nihat Yolageldit
Magnificent Travel Agency
Istanbul, Turkey
We used them to plan all our in country travel..they were great and inexpensive
Arranged all hotels, flights, pick ups, tours of all the venues, with guides..
We used In a small mini van that sometimes had other independents ..we were 7 people. We told him where we wanted to go, hotels, etc..( they can do hotels for you ). They arranged eveything..they were on time, reliable..we arranged our own international flights on air turkey.. And they were great too. Customer service and flight was great...

genoise

Thank you all. Your advice is invaluable.

BowenLinda

http://www.industravels.ca/turkey.html

This is a tour company I am considering for Turkey for 2015. Scroll down and you will see the larger group tours and some small group tours. It also offers small group, women only tours.

HappyTrvlr

Some small group tours will use buses on the coast then fly you to Cappadocia cutting down the hours on the buses.
We are independent travelers but looked at tours some friends took and it looked like Odysseys Unlimited had less time on the bus than, for example, Overseas Adventure Travel. At least Rick Steves lists hours on bus each day in his tour descriptions.

jft

Are you travelling on your own or with another person?

worldinabag

Hi

We were on a tour and one of the guests highly recommended Ozturk Boutique Tours - http://www.ozturk.com.au/home