Turkey is an incredible country, and I’m so lucky to have traveled there with a group of my friends thanks to the EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey trip.
Below is the itinerary for this tour, the amount I paid, my thoughts, and some essentials you should pack for it.
If you want a TL;DR: I loved Turkey, but this trip needs work. I wouldn’t recommend the Grand Tour of Turkey trip, but instead, I would recommend doing the Turkey: Istanbul & Cappadocia trip, as the Turkish Riviera was nothing special (and quite frankly, where we stayed was just a cruise port).
This EF Ultimate Break review has everything you need to know about the Grand Tour of Turkey trip, including where you’ll stay, what activities you’ll do, and the itinerary.
Keep reading to learn more about the issues I had with this trip and what I did enjoy!
(EF Ultimate Break trips are for anyone between 18 and 35!)
Published: July 5, 2024
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My Trip to Turkey
Before we dive into the review, I want to share some quick facts about my trip to Turkey, including when I went, my flight information, and the cost of the trip.
The tour was the EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey trip.
When: May 24, 2024 to June 5, 2024
Trip type: Plus
Flights: ORD-CDG-LIS* and IST-CDG-ORD with Air France
Price:
- $3,459 trip fee with flights
- $505 extras
- $179 travel protection
- $70 individual stay ahead (for requesting a flight departing before the trip start date)
- $75 special travel (to arrive in Lisbon instead of Istanbul)
- Savings: $300 REPEAT traveler discount + $200 sale discount (Read more about EF Ultimate Break discounts and sales)
- Total price: $3,788
Group size: 31 people
*Note: For this trip, I landed in Lisbon instead of Istanbul. I decided to travel solo in Lisbon before the tour started. EF was able to book my flight to Lisbon instead of Istanbul at my request for an additional fee. I was then responsible for booking my flight from LIS to IST.
Disclaimer: When you use my link to save $100 off a trip with EFUB, I also receive a discount on trips as part of the ambassador program. Discounts were used to book this trip, costing me less than the retail rate listed above. This review was not compensated, and I always give my honest opinion.
Itinerary for EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey
I loved Turkey, but this tour is definitely fast-paced. You’ll need lots of energy, especially in the first half of the trip, as there’s lots to do and you have some very early mornings.
Below are the highlights of what we did each day on the EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey trip.
This itinerary follows most of what you will find on the EF trip page. Still, there are also some additional activities that our TD added or we did during our free time. These additional activities are noted.
*Optional activities provided by EF Ultimate Break
**Activities added by my tour director, none of which were optional
Day 1: Fly to Istanbul
- Leave the USA (or Canada) for Turkey – You will have an overnight flight.
If you book your own flights, make sure you land on the right day, as EF’s itineraries include the flight days.
Day 2: Arrive in Istanbul
- Land in Istanbul
- Check into your hotel
If you book your own flights, make sure you land in Istanbul on this date. Or book some solo time in the city before the trip begins. Istanbul is easy to navigate, so I highly recommend it if you can!
Day 3: Tour of Istanbul + Welcome Dinner
- Sightseeing tour of Istanbul, including the Hagia Sophia
- “Grand Bazaar” – closed Sundays
- Free afternoon in Istanbul
- Welcome dinner
Day 4: Optional Bosphorus Cruise, Street Food Tour, and Hammam or Free Day in Istanbul
- Bosphorus River cruise and street food tour*
- Hammam Spa Visit*
Day 5: Fly to Cappadocia + Tour of Cappadocia Region
- Early morning flight to Cappadocia (included)
- Kaymakli Underground City – You can skip this if you’re claustrophobic!
- Rug demonstration**
- Jewelry shopping**
- Free evening at the hotel
Day 6: Optional Hot Air Balloon, Turkish Night Show, and Tour of Cappadocia Region
- Hot air balloon ride*
- Imagination Valley
- Pottery demonstration
- Pasabag Open Air Museum
- Lunch** (not included, but we had to eat at a restaurant our TD chose – it was subpar)
- Goreme National Park
- Love Valley
- Turkish Night Show*
Day 7: Travel to Pamukkale
- Travel day (8+ hours) to Pamukkale
- A quick stop in Konya in the morning
- Free evening at a hotel with thermal baths and belly dancer
Day 8: Pamukkale Cotton Castle + Travel to Turkish Riviera
- Morning in the Ancient City of Hierapolis
- Afternoon in Aphrodisias
- Travel (3ish hours) to Turkish Riviera – my group stayed in Kusadasi, which was just a cruise port (some previous groups have stayed in Bodrum)
Day 9: Free Day in the Turkish Riviera
- Free day! Beaches, swimming pool at the hotel, shopping in town, great opportunity to get real Turkish food
Day 10: Ephesus Ancient Ruins
- Ephesus tour
- “Cooking class” (not a traditional cooking class – just a short demonstration and you can chop vegetables, then you eat food you didn’t even cook)
- Leather shopping** (Flashing lights warning – they will not give you one, so this is your warning)
- House of Virgin Mary
Day 11: Optional Sirince Village Visit + Free Time in Turkish Riviera
- Sirince Village*
- Free time in the Turkish Riviera
Day 12: Travel Back to Istanbul + Farewell Dinner
- Travel to Istanbul
- Stop at Acropolis of Pergamon
- Farewell dinner
Day 13: Fly Home
- Fly out from IST (or SAW)
EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey Hotels
The hotels on the EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey trip varied a lot. The hotel in Istanbul was in a great location, and the hotel in Kusadasi had a nice pool. However, the Richmond Pamukkale Thermal Hotel had many dirty rooms, and the staff was rude.
For a plus trip, EF needs to choose better hotels or make it clear that the 5-star hotels are not 5-star hotels by US standards. Our TD kept highlighting how great these “5-star” hotels were, and we were constantly disappointed.
Hotels on my specific trip
- Grand Yavuz – Istanbul (Nights 1-3)
- Hotel Mustafa – Urgup, Cappadocia (Nights 4-5)
- Richmond Pamukkale Thermal Hotel – Pamukkale (Night 6)
- Seaport 360 – Kusadasi (Nights 7-10)
- Grand Yavuz – Istanbul (Night 11)
Food in Turkey
The food in Turkey was one of my favorite parts of the tour, especially when we could find authentic restaurants. There were a lot of good dishes and desserts to try, including baklava, Turkish delight, shakshuka, kebabs, Doner, pite, and menamen.
Vegetarians + other dietary restrictions: The people on this with dietary restrictions typically found it easy to find food they could eat. We had people with all sorts of restrictions, including nut allergies, lactose intolerance, and vegetarians. The only issue was the language barrier when ensuring things were not cooked in dairy or anything. And, on the food tour (part of the options Bosphorus Cruise), our TD was not accommodating of vegetarians, so they couldn’t eat much.
EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey – Included Activities
Here are the activities that are included as part of the tour, per the EF Ultimate website:
- Tour of Istanbul with a local guide
- Entrance to Hagia Sophia
- Turkish cooking class
We also got access to all the ancient cities, plus short tours of them.
Optional Add-ons
There are some optional activities that you can add on at checkout or before you depart at an additional cost:
- Bosphorus River cruise and walking tour
- Hammam spa visit
- Traditional Turkish night show
- Sunrise hot air balloon in Cappadocia
- Sirince village visit
These activities cost extra. You can book them when you book the trip or add them on in your account after you book.
The price of these activities can vary by departure. As noted in the price section above, I paid a total of $505 for all the activities.
Almost everyone on our tour booked all the excursions, the most popular being the hot air balloons. Some people booked the Sirince Village visit but then decided not to go and had more free/downtime instead.
EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey Trip Types
Here are the options EF Ultimate offers for the Grand Tour of Turkey trip (descriptions from efultimatebreak.com):
- EF Ultimate Plus: Stay in hotel-style accommodations, room with just one other person, and enjoy more included meals. Designed for friends, couples, or anyone who values their me time, Plus combines an immersive itinerary with more space to unwind.
I took the Plus trip, which was the only option, where I had one roommate each night.
Overall Rating: 2.5/5
Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this tour, as it did feel too fast-paced to enjoy. Many small issues built up as the tour went on, and our tour director didn’t seem to care about us.
Turkey is a great country, but everything was too rushed, especially the tours through the ancient cities, which are a major selling point of the trip. Your free time is in a cruise port geared towards tourists in town for one day. Four nights there is too many.
Our tour director also forced us to make many shopping stops, which cut into the little free time we did have, especially in Cappadocia.
Despite not enjoying the tour, I LOVED Turkey, and Istanbul and Cappadocia are certainly the highlights. I’d recommend looking at the Turkey: Istanbul & Cappadocia tour instead of this one and then spending extra time in Istanbul after the tour if your schedule allows.
If you want to read even more about what I think can be improved with this tour, I put extra details in the next section.
Here are the overall pros and cons of this trip:
Pros:
- Turkey: Turkey is a beautiful, historic country, and I’m happy I spent two weeks there.
- Excursions in Istanbul: The Bosphorus Cruise and street food tour in Istanbul were a ton of fun. It’s such an incredible city and certainly the highlight of the tour.
- Hot Air Balloons: Flying in a hot air balloon in Cappadocia is an unreal experience, and the company EF used (Royal Balloon) was excellent.
Cons:
- Grand Bazaar is closed on Sundays: The Grand Bazaar tour is scheduled for Sunday (Day 3 of the tour) when the bazaar is closed. If you book the Optional Bosphorus Cruise and Hammam Spa, you will not have time in Istanbul to visit the bazaar.
- Kusadasi is a cruise port: The second half of the tour is mainly in a cruise port. It’s hard to find authentic food here, and I’d rather spend more time in Istanbul than in Kusadasi.
- Rushed tours: Tours of historical sites are rushed and not even included at some sites (Pamukkale & Hierapolis had no tour)
- Forced shopping stops: There are required shopping stops where salespeople are very pushy and take away from our free time. If you want to buy rugs, leather goods, or jewelry, it’s fine, but you shouldn’t be required to spend hours at these places.
- Cooking class: The cooking class is not actually a class. They just demonstrate a few things and let you “help” by chopping vegetables.
- Forced lunch stops: We were forced to eat at certain places that were undoubtedly tourist traps. Many of them charged $20 USD for a basic meal, and they didn’t offer Turkish food, only Americanized dishes. Our tour guide could’ve found better places, as I’m sure there were better places than these, and it happened multiple times.
Ultimately, I still love traveling with EF Ultimate Break and have more trips booked with them in the future. Want to know what my favorite tour so far has been? Click here to find out and read the full review. (Spoiler alert: I gave it a 5/5)
Or check out all my EF Ultimate Break reviews here:
- Belize: Rainforests, Reefs, & Ruins
- South Korea Spotlight
- Costa Rica Adventure (New Year’s in Costa Rica)
- Grand Tour of Turkey
- New Year’s Trips with EF Ultimate Break
Issues With The Grand Tour of Turkey
I had many issues with this tour. Many may be just my opinions or dramaticness, but after traveling on four tours with EF Ultimate Break, group tours with other companies, and to 25+ countries, here are the biggest issues I had with this tour and some details.
I wish I had known these going into the tour, as my expectations would’ve been different. But a lot of this shocked me, and the issues really built up as the tour continued.
I want to share them so you know what to expect if you book this tour. Maybe these things won’t bother you, though; in that case, you may enjoy the trip more than I did! I have shared these details with EF Ultimate Break, so hopefully, there will be changes in the future.
- Flights: First, EF made it SO EASY to change my arrival city to Lisbon (I saw Taylor Swift there!!). HOWEVER, when we left Istanbul, we had to leave the hotel at 3 AM on the last day to make it for our flights. The farewell dinner was at 8 PM on the night before, which was not ideal, and I only got two hours of sleep, making it pretty miserable. We were also booked on an airline with only one flight out of Istanbul per day. So, when our flight was delayed 4 hours, and there was nothing we could do to get out sooner, we still had to take the airport transfer at the original time. We, in turn, missed our flights out from Paris (where we had a layover), which, again, only had one per day to our respective cities in the US. They ended up rebooking us on flights with two layovers that landed much later than planned. I know this happens when traveling, but I’d book myself on an airline with better backup options in case of delays. Finally, the delays and rebookings happened during the farewell dinner, which ruined the night for the group of us flying to Paris. If you can, I highly recommend booking your own flights!
- Pacing: The trip is very fast-paced till you get to the Turkish Riviera, which was expected knowing how these trips are. However, I wish there was more time in Cappadocia and Istanbul vs. the Turkish Riviera. Four days in a cruise port city was too much. I would’ve rather had a free day in Istanbul or Cappadocia to do other activities (ATVing, more time to see the balloons from the ground, etc.). We had minimal free time, especially in the places where I actually wanted free time, like in Istanbul. Lots of time was taken up by the unfun, non-optional stops our TD made us go to.
- Forced stops by our TD: We had three additional required shopping stops where we stopped for leather goods, jewelry, and rugs. They were not on EF’s itinerary and took away from our limited free time. The salespeople at these stops were extremely pushy, making it very uncomfortable to stay there when we didn’t want to shop. Our TD added them all at their own discretion, and I can imagine they get a cut of whatever they sell to us. Furthermore, we were required to eat at certain restaurants, such as in Cappadocia. It’s not like we were on the road or anything with limited options. We could’ve had free time to choose a place, but instead sat us all down at an overpriced restaurant. Lots of things were pushed on us that no one enjoyed.
- Tour director: I’m unhappy with how our TD ran our tour. They seemed to only want to do the bare minimum. They prioritized their free time away from us instead of ensuring we had a fun and comfortable trip through Turkey. Overall, they rushed through scheduled stops and tours, and the guided tours of the ruins and stuff are very choppy, so it’s hard to keep up. They also walked EXTREMELY fast, such that some naturally slower walkers in our group were doing their best to keep up every day but would still fall behind. A few of us would have to fall behind between the group up front and the slower people to make sure they didn’t get lost. We asked them if we could slow down a bit or stop more frequently to ensure everyone was caught up, but our TD said no. We talked amongst the group, and we were all okay with walking slower so everyone could keep pace, but our TD didn’t want to. Furthermore, on the street food tour in Istanbul, they didn’t offer meat-free alternatives for the multiple vegetarians or options for other dietary restrictions. I’ve never seen this happen on a tour before, and it was unfair to the people who paid for it but couldn’t eat anything. We also had issues getting our TD to take bathroom breaks for the group on long travel days on tours, even when it was an urgent matter, or people were fine skipping tours to use the restroom.
- Turkish night show: The night show has unlimited drinks, which is fun, except people got food poisoning from the hotel dinner on our first night there, so they didn’t eat much on the second night there. Combined with unlimited drinks afterward, that didn’t lead to the best result, and a better hotel or dinner would be great. The show also included an animal, which I don’t like to support, and I would have skipped it if I knew that going in.
- Guided tours: The guided tours of the ancient cities were rushed or non-existent, which was very disappointing, as we would have appreciated them more if we had learned about them.
- Cooking class: The cooking class was a major disappointment. I love cooking classes and was excited to finally learn about some popular Turkish dishes. It was more of a demonstration than anything. A few people chopped veggies, but all the food we ate was pre-cooked. I wouldn’t call this a cooking class at all.
- Farewell dinner: Our farewell dinner was at 8 PM, and our airport transfer was at 3 AM. Our meals came out after 9:30, and everyone wanted to leave by then. The music was nice at first, but it was also so loud that we couldn’t talk to each other last night. There were also a ton of flashing lights that the restaurant refused to turn off. They gave people headaches, and they had to sit outside, away from the group. Thank goodness no one was epileptic.
- Hotel quality: The hotels on this tour were hit or miss. The hotel in Istanbul – Grand Yavuz – was in a good location. The other hotels were subpar, and there were many issues with the rooms, including dirty sheets, bathrooms, and towels when the rooms were supposed to be clean. Two of the hotels are rated as “5-star” hotels, but they are clearly not, at least by the standards we might expect.
Remember that this is just my opinion—although I did get a lot of feedback from people on my tour, too. There were people on my trip who enjoyed the tour and would rate it higher than 2.5/5. So don’t let this discourage you if you really want to take this tour. Just know that some things need to be fixed on the tour, and I wish I knew them going into it.
Packing Essentials for Turkey with EF Ultimate
In addition to your standard travel items (clothes, bathroom essentials, good shoes), here are some things I wouldn’t go back to Turkey without:
- Headscarf (for women)
- Handheld fan
- Reusable water bottle
- Sunscreen
- Credit card without foreign transaction fees
- Anti-theft bag
- Anti-diarrheal
- Turkey travel guidebook
- Go Pro
- Day pack
- Hostel essentials (if staying in hostels)
For more of my travel must-haves, check out my Amazon page!
EF Ultimate Break Discount
For first-time EF Ultimate travelers, you can save $100 off any trip by booking here!
(or any of the links in this article. Code & discount are automatically applied at checkout. Reach out with questions or issues!)
If you’ve traveled with EF Ultimate before, use code REPEAT for up to $300 off your next trip.
EF also frequently runs sales throughout the year, with their biggest being in November for Black Friday.
If you want details on their next sale, send me a DM on Instagram (or any other social media!)
I know I didn’t rate this trip highly, but I LOVED all the other trips I’ve taken with EF Ultimate Break! Check them out here:
- Belize: Rainforests, Reefs, & Ruins
- South Korea Spotlight
- Costa Rica Adventure (New Year’s in Costa Rica)
- Grand Tour of Turkey
- New Year’s Trips with EF Ultimate Break
EF Ultimate Break Trips Similar to the Grand Tour of Turkey
If this trip sounds fun, or you want an alternative, check out some similar options that EF Ultimate offers:
Other trips with EF Ultimate Break near Turkey:
- The Greek Islands
- Ultimate Greek Islands
- Italy & the Greek Islands
- Italy & Greece Getaway
- Rome, the Amalfi Coast & Greece
- European Summer
- Journey to Jordan
- Egypt Expedition
- Egypt: Cruise the Nile
EF Ultimate Break Grand Tour of Turkey Verdict
I took this trip with a group of 10 friends who have all met thanks to EF Ultimate Break trips. I’m so thankful I had them on this tour with me to make the most of what was an otherwise disappointing tour. They all agree that this tour leaves a lot to be desired.
While I loved my time in Turkey and can’t wait to go back someday, I’d highly recommend the Turkey: Istanbul & Cappadocia tour over this one. Istanbul and Cappadocia were the highlights of the trip, and the other parts were too rushed to even enjoy the history there.
I can’t wait for my next EF Ultimate Break trip, but I would consider another one over the Grand Tour of Turkey until they can fix all the issues with this tour.
Remember, you can save $100 off your first EF trip by booking here!
If you have questions about traveling with EF, check out my FAQs, including more EF Ultimate Break discounts.