Empires, Balloons
& the Turquoise Coast

Land at Istanbul Airport and transfer to the Four Seasons at Sultanahmet — a neoclassical building of 1918–19, originally the city’s first modern prison, now sixty-five rooms arranged around an enclosed garden courtyard, and a few minutes’ walk from the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia.

The afternoon settles you into Sultanahmet, where Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire stand side by side on the same square. An evening walk takes in the Hippodrome, where chariots once raced, and the exteriors of Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque as the lights come on.

A welcome dinner introduces the food: meze, kebabs, pide, salad, baklava and Turkish tea.

A full private day. Hagia Sophia first — a sixth-century cathedral, a mosque from 1453, and for fifteen hundred years the single building that explains this city. Then the Blue Mosque across the square: six minarets, twenty thousand handmade İznik tiles, and best entered early.

The Hippodrome holds the Egyptian Obelisk, the Serpentine Column and the Fountain of Wilhelm II. Below it, the Basilica Cistern — the largest of several hundred beneath the city — holds 336 marble columns in the half-dark, two of them standing on Medusa heads nobody can fully explain.

The afternoon is Topkapı Palace: four hundred years of sultans, the imperial treasury, and pavilions with the Bosphorus below. Dinner is on a rooftop with Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque lit.

The Spice Bazaar first, built in the 17th century and still the best concentration of spice, dried fruit, nuts and sweets in the city: lokum in rose, pistachio and pomegranate; Gaziantep pistachios; Turkish coffee and tea; cheese, olives and spice by the kilo.

Then out into Eminönü on foot for the street food that actually is Istanbul — simit, döner, pide, lahmacun, börek, midye dolma from a pavement tray, and baklava with coffee to finish.

The afternoon crosses the Galata Bridge into Karaköy, past the Galata Tower and along İstiklal Avenue to Taksim. The evening is a Bosphorus dinner cruise between Europe and Asia, with the palaces and mosques lit along both shores.

A domestic flight of about an hour and twenty, then a private transfer to the Museum Hotel in Uçhisar — the only Relais & Châteaux member in Cappadocia, furnished throughout with genuine antiques and looking out over the fairy chimneys towards Mount Erciyes.

The afternoon begins in Göreme and the Open-Air Museum, a UNESCO site of rock-cut churches with frescoes from the 10th to 12th centuries painted directly onto the tuff. Then Love Valley for the tallest of the chimneys, and Pasabag — Monks Valley — for the mushroom-capped ones.

A stop at a pottery village where the craft has been worked for centuries, then a Cappadocian dinner in a cave restaurant: pottery kebab, and wine from local grapes.

Awake before dawn for the morning this whole journey is built around. The balloon lifts as the sun breaks over the valleys, and for the next hour you drift silently above the chimneys with a hundred other balloons rising around you. It is, by common consent, one of the great experiences in travel, and photographs consistently undersell it. Champagne on landing.

Back to the hotel for a served breakfast of Anatolian produce, much of it grown on site. The afternoon goes underground to Kaymaklı or Derinkuyu — whole cities carved eight levels into the volcanic rock by early Christians sheltering from invaders, complete with ventilation shafts, churches and stables.

Then Pigeon Valley, named for the thousands of dovecotes cut into the cliffs, and Uçhisar Castle for the view across the region. Dinner is traditional, with local music.

A private drive west across central Anatolia, with stops along the way through country most visitors fly over.

Check in at Doga Thermal, and spend the afternoon in the hotel’s thermal pools — the geothermal water here is high in calcium and has been used therapeutically since antiquity.

At sunset you walk the travertines: white calcium terraces built up over millennia by water spilling down the hillside, and the single most photographed landscape in Turkey. In the late gold light the whole hill glows.

The morning walks barefoot up the terraces — socks are not permitted — through the flowing water that made them. Above sits Hierapolis, the ancient city built on top of the formations, with a remarkably well-preserved theatre looking out over the valley. Cleopatra’s Pool, for those who want it, is a swim among the fallen columns.

The afternoon is Ephesus, one of the great ancient cities of the Mediterranean: the Library of Celsus and its two-storey facade; the Great Theatre, Turkey’s largest, which held up to thirty thousand and whose acoustics still work; marble-paved Curetes Street; the Temple of Hadrian; and the Terrace Houses, where the frescoes and mosaics of the wealthy survive under cover.

On to the coast at Kušadası for the night.

South towards the Mediterranean, stopping at Perge — one of the most impressive sites in Turkey and one of the least crowded. A long colonnaded street, the agora, a Roman theatre for fifteen thousand, and a stadium among the best preserved in the ancient world.

Check in at Maxx Royal Belek on the Mediterranean coast, with seven swimming areas, a Colin Montgomerie golf course and a spa.

The evening explores Kaleiçi, Antalya’s old town: cobbled streets of Ottoman houses, Hadrian’s Gate of 130 AD, and the old harbour with its yachts and waterfront restaurants.

A private boat along the Turkish Riviera, where the Mediterranean is as clear as its reputation. Swimming, snorkelling, hidden coves reachable only from the water, and coastal waterfalls that drop straight into the sea. Lunch aboard or at a waterside restaurant.

The afternoon is yours: the resort’s pools, beach and spa; the Düden Waterfalls, where the river plunges directly into the Mediterranean; or more of Kaleiçi at a slower pace.

A farewell Turkish-Mediterranean dinner closes the journey.

Breakfast at the resort and, depending on your flight, a final swim or spa treatment. Private transfer to Antalya International Airport, with VIP fast track.