Fethiye
13-Day Turkey Tour
Most Turkey itineraries make you choose: the Mediterranean coast or the ancient ruins. The fairy chimneys or the turquoise bays. This one doesn’t. Over 13 days, you’ll cross six of Turkey’s most distinct regions — each with its own landscape, history, and rhythm — without a single rushed day or an overnight bus.
You’ll start in Istanbul, where your guide walks you through 1,500 years of empire: Byzantine cisterns, Ottoman mosques, the controlled chaos of the Grand Bazaar. Then you’ll fly to Cappadocia, where the geology is 60 million years old and the cave churches still hold their original frescoes. From there, the route turns south — Antalya‘s Roman theaters and Mediterranean cliffs, Fethiye‘s island-scattered coastline by boat, the white terraces of Pamukkale where ancient Romans built a spa city, and finally Ephesus, one of the best-preserved classical cities on earth.
This is our most comprehensive itinerary. Every transfer, every flight, every guide is arranged in advance. You focus on where you are — we handle how you get to what’s next.
12-Day Istanbul to Antalya Tour via Gallipoli, Troy & Ephesus
This is the western route. While most multi-day Turkey itineraries head inland to Cappadocia, this one follows the Aegean coast south — through the battlefields of Gallipoli, the layered ruins of Troy, the healing temples of Pergamon, and the marble streets of Ephesus. Then it turns toward the Mediterranean: the white terraces of Pamukkale, a full day on the water in Fethiye, and a final stretch along Antalya‘s ancient coastline.
You’ll cover 3,000 years of history across eight destinations, each one with a different story. Gallipoli is about the 20th century and the cost of war. Troy is about myth meeting archaeology — nine cities stacked on top of each other. Ephesus is the Roman Empire at its most ambitious: a city of 250,000 with a library, a theater, and plumbing. And Pamukkale is geology doing something that looks impossible — hot mineral water spilling down white calcium terraces for millennia.
Every transfer is private, every guide is local and licensed, and every day has room for you to slow down or shift direction. This is not a bus tour with a megaphone. It is twelve days designed around the way you actually want to travel.
10-Day Istanbul to Fethiye Tour
This is Turkey’s western arc — the route that follows the Aegean rather than the interior. You’ll start in Istanbul with two full days in the city, then travel south through landscapes that shaped civilizations. Gallipoli, where an entire generation’s story is written into the hillsides. Troy, where nine cities were built on top of each other over 4,000 years. Pergamon, where the ancient Greeks invented parchment because they ran out of papyrus. Ephesus, the best-preserved Greco-Roman city on the Mediterranean.
Then the terrain shifts. Pamukkale‘s calcium terraces glow white against the Anatolian plateau, and the Roman spa city of Hierapolis sits on the ridge above them. From there, a private transfer takes you down to Fethiye on the turquoise coast — where you’ll spend a day on the water, cruising past islands and into sheltered bays.
This itinerary covers more ground than most 10-day tours, but every transfer is handled, every guide is local, and every day is built around your pace. No bus groups. No rigid schedule. Just a well-designed route through some of the most historically dense terrain in the world.
Fethiye to Olympos Blue Cruise
This is not a land tour. You sleep on the water, eat on deck, and wake up anchored in a different cove each morning. The vessel is a gulet — a traditional Turkish wooden sailing boat, handbuilt and wide-hulled, designed for exactly this kind of coastal cruising.
Your route follows the Lycian coast from Fethiye to Demre, passing through some of the most protected stretches of Turkey’s Mediterranean shoreline. You’ll anchor at Butterfly Valley, where a steep gorge meets the sea. You’ll swim at the Blue Lagoon in Oludeniz. You’ll walk through the harbor town of Kas, explore the sunken city of Kekova from the waterline, and reach Simena — a village accessible only by boat, with a medieval castle looking down over the bay.
The pace is set by the water, not a schedule. Meals are prepared on board by the crew. The swimming stops are chosen by the captain based on conditions. If you want to spend an extra hour in the water at Aquarium Bay, you spend an extra hour in the water at Aquarium Bay.
Fethiye 12 Islands Boat Trip
The coastline off Fethiye is scattered with small islands, each with its own character — shallow turquoise bays, pine-covered slopes, Byzantine ruins half-swallowed by the sea. This boat trip connects the best of them into a single day on the water.
You’ll depart from Fethiye Harbor mid-morning aboard a traditional wooden gulet. The route threads through the Gulf of Fethiye, stopping at islands where the water is so clear you can see the bottom at five meters. Yassicalar’s shallow bays are warm enough to wade in. Tersane Island has the remains of a Byzantine-era shipyard where boats were built a thousand years before yours. Domuz Island offers a quiet bay away from other boats. And Kizil Island — Red Island — delivers a late-afternoon stop where volcanic red rock meets the sea.
Lunch is served on board. The swimming stops are long enough to actually swim. And the boat returns to Fethiye by 17:00, leaving you the evening for the town’s waterfront restaurants.
Fethiye Oludeniz Boat Trip
Oludeniz is famous for its lagoon, but the real coastline starts where the beach ends. This boat trip heads south from Oludeniz into a stretch of coast that’s only accessible by water — narrow valleys with waterfalls, caves that glow blue from refracted light, and an island covered in the remains of a Byzantine church complex.
You’ll board in the morning and spend the day moving between bays, each one different from the last. Butterfly Valley is a steep-walled gorge with seasonal waterfalls and — in the right months — clouds of Jersey tiger butterflies. Blue Cave is a sea cave where the light turns the water electric. Cold Water Bay lives up to its name: freshwater springs feed directly into the sea, dropping the temperature and creating a clarity you can feel. Aquarium Bay is where you snorkel. St Nicholas Island is where you climb through 1,500-year-old Byzantine walls.
Lunch is served on board between stops. The boat returns to Oludeniz by 17:00.
9-Day Istanbul, Fethiye Blue Cruise & Antalya Tour
You’ll spend your first days in Istanbul on your own terms — choosing between the Ottoman grandeur of Sultanahmet and the waterfront energy of the Bosphorus. Then you’ll fly south, board a traditional Turkish gulet in Fethiye, and spend three nights sailing a coastline that most visitors only see from a beach towel. Butterfly Valley, the Blue Lagoon at Oludeniz, the sunken ruins of Kekova — this is the Mediterranean at its most unfiltered.
After three mornings waking up on the water, you’ll transfer overland through the Olympos corridor to Antalya, where a free day lets you explore the old harbor town, hit the beach, or simply do nothing at all. The final leg brings you back to Istanbul for your departure.
This itinerary balances structure with open time. Guided days in Istanbul, three days of coastal sailing with meals included on the gulet, and enough free days to make the trip feel like yours — not someone else’s schedule.