Turkey · Itinerary · Updated September 2026
14 days in Turkey: Istanbul, Cappadocia and the Lycian coast
Istanbul and Cappadocia is the fortnight most people book, and it fits into eight days. This route spends the other six on the Lycian coast, which is the part people come home wishing they had seen. Fares and fees checked September 2026.
MusikAnimal / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Length
14 days
Budget
€1,900 / $2,203
per person, mid-range
Best season
Apr–Jun, Sep–Oct
Cappadocia freezes in winter, the coast shuts
Stops
6
5 stops, 1 internal flight
The route
Four nights in Istanbul, three in Cappadocia, then south to the Lycian coast for four, and two at Ephesus. Fly into Istanbul, out of Izmir.
Day by day
Days 1–4 · Istanbul
Four nights, and the first sign of what tickets cost here
The Hagia Sophia now charges foreign visitors **€25**, on an upper-gallery route separate from the prayer hall. Budget for the Topkapi Palace and the Basilica Cistern on top. Four nights is not generous: it is Sultanahmet, the Grand Bazaar and the spice market, a day on the Asian side at Kadikoy where the food is better and the prices are local, and a Bosphorus ferry that costs the same as a bus.
Sleep: Karakoy or Cihangir. Sultanahmet empties of everything but hotels after dark.
Days 5–7 · Cappadocia
One flight, three nights, and the most expensive hour of the trip
Turkish Airlines flies Istanbul to Nevsehir in about **1h20**, landing 40km from Goreme; Kayseri is 70km out but has more flights, so compare both. A balloon flight is **€200 to €280** in a standard basket and €300 to €400 in a small one, and it is weather-cancelled often enough that you should book it for your first morning and keep the second in reserve. The Goreme Open Air Museum is €20, with the Dark Church a separate €6.
Sleep: A cave hotel in Goreme or Uchisar. Uchisar is quieter and higher.
Day 8 · Antalya
Eight hours on a bus, and no way around it
Kamil Koc runs Goreme to Antalya in about **8h20**, roughly every four hours. There is no fast alternative: flying means routing back through Istanbul and losing the same day to airports. Take a morning departure, accept the day, and spend the evening in Kaleici, the walled old town above the harbour, which is a pleasant place to arrive tired.
Sleep: Kaleici, inside the old walls and ten minutes down to the water.
Days 9–11 · Kaş
Three nights on the coast, which is the point of the fortnight
Three and a half hours west along the coast road. Kas is a diving and sailing town rather than a resort: a harbour, a Sunday market, a Hellenistic theatre at the end of the promenade, and Kekova offshore where a Lycian town slid into the water in an earthquake and can still be seen through it. The Lycian Way passes through, so a morning of it is available without committing to the whole 540km.
Sleep: The old town above the harbour, or Cukurbag peninsula for the sea.
Days 12–13 · Selçuk
Ephesus, and the most expensive ruin in the country
An overnight bus from Kas, or a long day one. Ephesus is **€40**, with the Terrace Houses a further €15, which makes it dearer than the Colosseum and worth it anyway: it is a whole Roman city with its main street intact. Selcuk itself is five minutes away by minibus and is where you should sleep, not Kusadasi, which exists to service cruise ships.
Sleep: Selcuk town. Small, walkable, and full of pensions that do breakfast on the roof.
Day 14 · Izmir, and out
An hour to the airport
Izmir airport is about an hour from Selcuk and flies across Europe. Fly out of it rather than back to Istanbul: the return leg costs the best part of a day for a city you have already had four nights in.
Sleep: Nowhere, this is the day you leave.
Best things to do on this route
If you cut the trip short, these are the ones to keep.
- 01
A balloon over Cappadocia, booked for the first morning
€200 to €280 standard. Flights are cancelled for wind often enough that a first-morning booking with a spare day behind it is the difference between going up and not.
- 02
Ephesus with the Terrace Houses
€40 plus €15, and the €15 is the part most people skip. It is a covered excavation of actual Roman homes, mosaics and plumbing intact.
- 03
Kekova, from a boat
A Lycian town that slid into the sea in an earthquake and is still visible under it. Half a day from Kas and the reason to be on this coast.
- 04
Kadikoy on the Asian side
A ferry ride from Europe for the price of a bus ticket. Better food than Sultanahmet at local prices, which is a sentence that stops being true the moment you cross back.
- 05
The Hagia Sophia upper gallery
€25 now for foreign visitors. Go early: the queue is outdoors and Istanbul in summer does not forgive that.
Where to stay
Neighbourhoods rather than specific hotels. Prices move, areas don't.
Istanbul: Karakoy or Cihangir
Walkable to Sultanahmet across the Galata bridge, and unlike Sultanahmet they are neighbourhoods people actually live in after six.
Cappadocia: a cave hotel in Uchisar
Quieter and higher than Goreme, with the same balloons overhead at dawn and a shorter walk to the valleys.
Kaş: the old town
Above the harbour, steps down to the water, and the evening promenade on your doorstep. The peninsula is better if you want to swim off the rocks.
Selçuk: the town, not Kusadasi
Five minutes from Ephesus by minibus, a fraction of the cruise-port prices, and pensions that serve breakfast on the roof.
What it cost
Per person, 14 days. International flights not included.
| Category | Cost |
|---|---|
| Accommodation: 13 nights | €780 / $904 |
| Food and drink | €450 / $522 |
| Entry fees and the balloon | €430 / $499 |
| One flight, three long buses, local transport | €170 / $197 |
| SIM, laundry, everything else | €60 / $70 |
| Accommodation tax | €10 / $12 |
| Total | €1,900 / $2,203 |
Converted at €1 = $1.1593, checked 2 September 2026. About €136 a day. The row that surprises people is the third: **€430 of a €1,900 trip is tickets**, nearly a quarter, in a country whose food and beds are among the cheapest in the region. The balloon is €230 of that on its own. The accommodation tax was cut from 2% to 1% for 1 May to 31 December 2026, which is why the last row is small.
Getting around
Prices are in euros, and that is the whole trick
Turkey is inexpensive to live in and expensive to enter. Meals, buses and beds are priced in lira and feel cheap; the Hagia Sophia, Ephesus and the Goreme museum are priced in euros and cost what they would in Italy. The lira falling does not make the monuments cheaper, so budget the sightseeing in hard currency and the rest in lira.
Fly to Cappadocia, take the bus out of it
Istanbul to Nevsehir is 1h20 and worth the fare. Cappadocia to the coast is 8h20 by bus and there is no faster way, because flying means going back through Istanbul. One long day is the price of reaching the coast at all, and it buys the six days that make this route different.
Book the balloon for your first Cappadocia morning
Flights are grounded for wind regularly. Booking day five leaves days six and seven as fallbacks; booking day seven leaves nothing, and the refund is not what you came for.
Fly in to Istanbul, out of Izmir
The open jaw is what makes the coast affordable in time. Returning to Istanbul from Selcuk costs the best part of a day on a route you have already flown, in a city you have already spent four nights in.
Photos
Packing notes
The things that are annoying to find locally, or that people forget.
- Layers for Cappadocia at dawn. The balloon launches before sunrise and the valleys are cold well into May.
- Shoes with grip for Ephesus and the Lycian Way; both are polished marble or loose limestone.
- Modest cover for mosque visits, including the Hagia Sophia. Scarves are lent at the door but yours will fit better.
- A card that does not charge foreign transaction fees. Almost everything takes cards, and the euro-priced tickets are where fees add up.
- Sun protection for the coast between June and September, when Kas is reliably over 30°C.
Why the coast, and not more of Istanbul
Istanbul and Cappadocia is a genuinely good eight-day trip. It is also the trip almost everyone books, and the reason so many people come home saying they wished they had gone south.
The Turkish coast is not an add-on. It is a different country from the two cities: Lycian tombs cut into cliffs above fishing harbours, a sunken town you can see through the water, and a 540km waymarked path running along the whole of it. Four days there is the difference between a fortnight that saw two famous places and one that saw the country they sit in.
What it costs is one eight-hour bus. That is the honest trade, and it is worth it.
The tickets, and why they are in euros
The most useful thing to know before booking a Turkish itinerary is that the country’s day-to-day prices and its sightseeing prices behave differently.
Food, buses, taxis and hotels are priced in lira, and by European standards they are cheap. The monuments are not. The Hagia Sophia is €25 for foreign visitors. Ephesus is €40, with the Terrace Houses another €15. The Goreme Open Air Museum is €20 and its Dark Church is a further €6.
Those are euro prices, set in euros, and a falling lira does not reduce them. On this route they come to €430 of a €1,900 trip, which is a bigger share than in Spain or Portugal. Budget them separately and in hard currency, or the arithmetic that made Turkey look inexpensive stops working halfway through the second week.
The balloon is a booking problem, not a money problem
Everyone knows it costs €200 to €280. Fewer people plan for the fact that flights are cancelled for wind, regularly, and that the cancellation is decided at about four in the morning.
So the number that matters is not the fare, it is how many mornings you have left. Three nights in Cappadocia gives you three attempts if you book the first one. Two nights gives you two. Arriving late on your last evening and booking for the morning you leave gives you one, and a refund.
Book it for the first morning. If it flies, days six and seven are free for the valleys, which is a better problem than the alternative.