On Tour: Guides, Meals & Vehicles

From your hotel lobby. Be downstairs at the time in your documents and the driver will be there with your name.

Some hotels sit on streets closed to traffic, particularly in old Istanbul and in the Cappadocian villages. In that case, we use the nearest corner that a vehicle can reach as the pickup point, usually two or three minutes on foot, and the guide confirms it with you the evening before.

If you booked your own hotel, send us the name and address early so it can be added to the route.

Yes. Every guide who works with us holds a Turkish national tourist guide licence. This is an official qualification issued by the state, so a person cannot simply call themselves a licensed guide, and guiding at a site like Ephesus or Topkapi without one is illegal here.

The price shown on a tour page is for the English guided version. Guides in other languages are available on some tours and are priced in the booking form.

Drivers are not guides. On a touring day the guide travels with you and does the talking. On a pure transfer day the driver may speak little English, which is why a transfer carries no commentary.

Most touring days start between 09:00 and 09:30 with a hotel pickup. Days that open with a domestic flight start much earlier, and the itinerary says so on the day it applies.

Cappadocia tours finish between 16:00 and 17:00. Ephesus and Pamukkale days end at about 15:30, because the drive back is long. Istanbul half day tours finish around lunchtime.

Times in an itinerary are a guide, rather than exact promises. Traffic, weather and the time your group spends at each stop can change them, and a guide running twenty minutes behind at the second stop is normal rather than a problem.

Hotel breakfast every morning, and a breakfast box when the day starts before the dining room opens.

Lunch is included on most full touring days outside Istanbul, and on all Southeast Turkey tours except the Nemrut sunrise and sunset runs, which happen outside meal hours. Istanbul half day tours do not include a meal.

Dinner is included only where the tour page lists it. Each day on the tour page shows what that day includes, so you can count the meals before you book rather than guess at a daily budget.

Vegetarian and vegan meals are straightforward. Turkish cooking includes many vegetable dishes and the restaurants we use prepare both without difficulty. Tell us when you book so the request reaches the kitchen before you do.

Gluten free is harder and we will not promise it. Bread and wheat run through most of the menu, and kitchens outside the larger cities cannot rule out contact with gluten while preparing food. If you are coeliac rather than avoiding gluten by choice, tell us early and plan to carry some food of your own.

For nut, shellfish and other allergies, write down exactly what you cannot eat when you book. The guide carries the list and speaks to each kitchen. Bring your own medication, since pharmacies outside the cities may not stock what you need.

It depends which tour, and each tour page says so day by day.

In Cappadocia the Red Tour is almost all viewpoints and short walks, so it suits anyone. The Yellow Tour includes an optional valley walk of around two hours, and you can stay in the vehicle and meet the group at the far end. The Green Tour has some walking, none of it hard.

Ephesus is a long, gentle downhill on ancient marble, roughly two kilometres end to end. It is the easiest large ancient site in Turkey to walk, though the marble is slippery when wet. Pamukkale's travertines are walked barefoot, uphill, on wet rock.

In underground cities, you need to bend down to move through low, narrow passages. Those passages cannot be made easier to use, and skipping that one stop is always an option.

The vehicle matches the group. Small parties travel in a car or a minivan, larger group departures in a midibus or a coach. All of them are air conditioned and non smoking.

On a private tour the vehicle is yours: only your travel group uses the driver, guide and seats in the vehicle.

Long transfers between cities use larger vehicles with more legroom, because four hours in a minivan is a different experience from forty minutes in one.

No. There are no forced shopping stops on our tours. We do not take you to a carpet showroom, leather shop or jeweller and make you wait through a sales presentation.

A few workshop visits are part of the programme itself, and those are named in the itinerary. The pottery workshop in Avanos is one. It is on the Cappadocia Red Tour because throwing a pot on a kick wheel beside the Kizilirmak is worth watching, not because visitors might buy something afterwards. You can watch, try it yourself, and leave with nothing.

If you do want to shop, tell the guide what you are looking for. They know which places are honest and which are not, and that is a more useful conversation than the one that happens on a commission driven tour.

Tipping is entirely optional. Nothing in the price depends on it, and no guide or driver will ask you for one or behave differently without one.

Travellers who do tip usually do it at the end of a tour rather than daily, and give something to the guide and something to the driver separately. Tipping customs vary a great deal between countries. A single suggested amount would not suit all our travellers.

If you would rather say thank you another way, a review that names the guide is worth more to them than the money.

Come down as soon as you can and tell the hotel desk, who can reach the driver. On a private tour the day simply starts later and the guide adjusts the route to fit the time left.

On a group tour the vehicle waits about fifteen minutes and then leaves, because everyone else on it has a site with an opening time. If that happens, call the number in your documents. Where the group can still be reached we will get you to them by taxi at your own cost, and where it cannot, the day counts as a no show.

Set two alarms on the mornings with an early start. Take particular care on days with an early flight, when it is easier to miss the start.