Start in a hammam built by Sinan in 1584, commissioned by a sultan's wife to fund a charity complex across the water.
Take a private boat down the Bosphorus and another to Princes' Island, with swimming off the stern and lunch cooked on board.
Ride through the Cappadocian valleys for two hours at sunset, when the stuff goes orange and the coaches have gone.
Cook a Cappadocian lunch in a village kitchen and eat exactly what you made.
Watch more than a hundred balloons lift over the fairy chimneys at first light.
Why the programme is built this way
This is a cohort trip, and a cohort trip fails for different reasons than a leisure tour. Three decisions follow from that.
Two bases, one flight, no long drives. Four nights in Istanbul and three in Cappadocia, with a one-hour flight between them. Nothing on this programme involves a coach day, which matters because a group of twenty-five on a six-hour transfer arrives in a worse mood than it set off in. The trade is that the Aegean and the Mediterranean are not in it, and for eight days that is the right trade.
The group does things. A hammam, a cooking class, a potter's wheel, two hours on horseback, swimming off a boat. Five of the eight days have something participatory in them, and they are spaced so no two sit together. A cohort that has been handed a list of monuments goes quiet by day four; a cohort that has been in the water and on a horse does not.
Evenings are free, on purpose. Three of the Istanbul evenings and two of the Cappadocia ones are unprogrammed. Adults on a cohort trip want to find their own dinner and their own bar, and a faculty lead would rather the group did that than sat through a third arranged meal. The welcome and farewell dinners are the two we keep, and both are in restaurants rather than hotels.
Itinerary
Day 1 | Istanbul — Arrival and the hammam
The cohort is met at the airport and bags go into storage at the hotel, so the day starts without waiting for check-in. Then straight to Çemberlitaş Hamamı, built in 1584 by Nurbanu Sultan — wife of Selim II, mother of Murad III — to fund a charity complex across the water in Üsküdar, and attributed to Sinan. It is still a working bath, marble and steam and a scrub on a heated slab, and it is the right thing to do to a group that has just flown eleven hours. Welcome dinner afterwards on Ottoman palace cooking.
Day 2 | Istanbul — the Bosphorus and the Asian side
The Spice Bazaar first, which is smaller and better than the Grand Bazaar and smells like the point of it. Then a private boat up the Bosphorus — private matters here, because the cohort can sit together, hear the guide and stop where it wants. In the afternoon Beylerbeyi Palace on the Asian shore, a nineteenth-century summer palace built right at the water, and Çamlıca Hill, which is the highest point in the city and the only place the whole geography makes sense at once. Evening free.
Day 3 | Istanbul — the historic centre
The full day in Sultanahmet: Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome and Topkapı, then the Grand Bazaar at the end when the group wants to scatter. Sixty streets and five thousand shops, a meeting point and a time, and everybody finds their own way out. Evening free.
Day 4 | Istanbul — the Princes' Islands
A private boat for the day to Kınalı or Burgaz, two of the smaller Princes' Islands an hour out in the Marmara, where cars are not allowed and the Ottoman summer houses are still standing under the pines. The boat anchors for swimming and lunch is a barbecue cooked on board. For a cohort in late summer this is usually the day they talk about afterwards.
Day 5 | Istanbul to Cappadocia — Kaymaklı and the valleys
The morning flight to Kayseri or Nevşehir, an hour in the air. On arrival, old Çavuşin, a cliff village of rock-cut houses that was lived in until the 1960s, then the Kaymaklı Underground City, and Pigeon Valley, named for the dovecotes cut into the rock faces to collect the manure for the vineyards. In the late afternoon, two hours on horseback through the valleys at sunset — Cappadocia means something close to "land of beautiful horses" and this is the hour to be out in it. Evening free.
Day 6 | Cappadocia — balloons, Göreme and a cooking class
A very early start for the balloon flight at sunrise, weather permitting, which is the one thing on this programme nobody forgets. Then the Göreme Open Air Museum, a monastic valley of rock-cut chapels with eleventh-century frescoes, and the national park around it. In the middle of the day a cooking class in a village kitchen, and lunch is what the group has just made. Afterwards Avanos on the Kızılırmak, where the red river clay has been thrown on kick wheels for three thousand years and everyone gets a turn at a wheel. Evening free.
Day 7 | Cappadocia — Devrent, Paşabağ and the weavers
Devrent in the morning, which has no churches and no ruins at all — just eroded rock in shapes the guide will let the group name themselves — and Paşabağ, where the fairy chimneys have two and three caps on one stem and a hermit's chapel is cut into one of them. In the afternoon a weaving workshop: double-knotted silk on a cotton warp, the knots counted per square centimetre, the dyes explained, and a single carpet taking a weaver months. Farewell dinner in a restored stone house in the evening.
Day 8 | Cappadocia — Departure
Transfer to Kayseri or Nevşehir for the flight to Istanbul and the onward connection home.
This is the real question and we would rather answer it directly. Five of the eight days have something the group does rather than watches — a hammam, swimming off a boat, a cooking class, a potter's wheel, two hours on horseback — and five evenings are free. The monuments are there and they are extraordinary, but a cohort of adults in their twenties is not sold a week by a list of buildings. If you have travelled with a group that went flat by day four, that is what this structure is built against.
Flights are weather-dependent and the call is made at dawn. We book the first of the two Cappadocia mornings rather than the last, so there is a second chance in the window, and we tell the cohort in advance that it is conditional rather than letting them find out at four in the morning.
No, and it is worth explaining before the trip rather than on the doorstep. The historic baths run separate men's and women's sections with same-sex attendants, and nobody is undressed in front of the opposite sex. Students keep a wrap on throughout. We brief the group beforehand, including that the scrub is firm, and anyone who would rather not take part sits in the cool room with tea.
Sultanahmet is a full day on foot on uneven stone, and the Cappadocian valleys have steps and loose surfaces. The underground city involves low, narrow passages, and there is an alternative for anyone who would rather not go down. Everything else is light, and the horseback ride is at walking pace. We send a walking grade with every quotation and flag anything with a physical requirement when we confirm, so the faculty can tell the cohort in advance rather than on the day.
Yes, and we ask for both in writing before we confirm restaurants. Halal, vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and allergy requirements are all routine. On alcohol, some universities include a drink with the farewell dinner and some include none, and we follow whatever policy you set rather than assuming one.
The rooming list, dietary and medical notes, and the flight details. Flights matter most — the arrival time sets the whole first day, and this programme's first afternoon only works if the group lands in the morning. Tell us the flights as soon as they are booked and we will tell you if the first day needs rebuilding.
In the water, on a horse, at the wheel
Steam under the dome of a 1584 hammam, the cohort off the back of the boat, hands in a village kitchen, and horses in the valleys as the tuff turns orange.
No items found.
More tours by Marveltour
Istanbul Only
4 or 5 days · Istanbul only · the request we get most often
