Turkey has more than it's fair share of coast and paradise beach resorts. If the idea of sunbathing on the Med, Agean, Black Sea, or Marmara doesn't appeal to you, then how about spending a few days in the fascinating and beautiful mega city of Istanbul. Turkey connects Europe with Asia, and has spectacular mountain ranges to explore, and ancient culture including other worldly Cappadocia.
Top 10 Turkey Time Trips!
1. Turkey - Antalya & The Turquoise Coast (Chapter) Lonely Planet
Turkey’s Turquoise coast is a huge region of endless azure sea, lined with kilometres of sandy beaches and backed by mountains rising up to almost 3000m. It’s a winning combination no matter how you look at it.
2. Turkey - Ephesus, Bodrum & the South Aegan (Chapter) Lonely Planet
Turkey’s sparkling Aegean coast boasts 4000 years of civilisation – and it’s got the ruins to prove it, the most famous being ancient sites such as Ephesus, Priene, Miletus and Didyma, where excavations continue to yield astonishing new treasures every year.
3. Turkey - Izmir & the North Agean (Chapter) Lonely Planet
Izmir is Turkey’s third-largest city – a buzzing metropolis – and the short stretch of coast running north is a colossus for history buffs. Beaches along the Aegean Sea and the Biga Peninsula are superb, while on the Çesme Peninsula, Alaçati offers world-class windsurfing.
4. Turkey - Cappadocia (Chapter) Lonely Planet
Cappadocia is a geological oddity of honeycombed hills and towering phallic boulders of otherworldly beauty. Fashioned through lashings of volcanic ash, moulded by millennia of rain and river flow, this fantastical topography is equally matched by the human history here.
5. Turkey - Thrace & Marmara (Chapter)
The Thracian isthmus is a former Balkan stronghold that adds an important chapter to the Turkish narrative: on the beautiful, pine-strewn Gallipoli (Gelibolu) Peninsula, nationalism spread its wings in the First World War and Atatürk became a legend incarnate.
6. Turkey - Istanbul (Chapter)
Ask locals to describe what they love about Istanbul and they’ll shrug, give a small smile and say merely that there is no other place like it. Spend a few days here, and you’ll know exactly what they mean.
7. Eastern Mediterranean - Turkey (PDF Chapter) Lonely Planet
Download the eBook version of Lonely Planet's Eastern Mediterranean PDF chapter from the Turkey guidebook.
8. Turkey - Northeastern Anatolia (PDF Chapter) Lonely Planet
This is the Northeastern Anatolia chapter from Lonely Planet's Turkey guidebook.
9. Turkey - Western Anatolia (Chapter) Lonely Planet
Durable, diverse and down-to-earth, Western Anatolia combines everything from ancient sites, such as Sagalassos and Afrodisias, and spectacular mountain terrain to some of Turkey’s heartiest food and friendliest people.
10. Turkey - Black Sea Coast (Chapter) Lonely Planet
This is a historic region, scattered with the legacies of civilisations and empires that have ebbed and flowed like Black Sea waves. And the existence of modern Turkey owes a massive debt to the passionate local support thrown behind Atatürk’s revolution.
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by Chris Raven & Simon Raven
The legends of Jason and the Argonauts, Noah’s Ark and a tribe of fierce female warriors known as the Amazons all originate from the Black Sea. Gripped by curiosity, Simon and Chris fire up their twenty year old Volvo that looks, “as rustic and weather-beaten as a Cold War tank” and embark on a quest to drive full circle around this ancient body of water at the birthplace of civilisation.
The legends of Jason and the Argonauts, Noah’s Ark and a tribe of fierce female warriors known as the Amazons all originate from the Black Sea. Gripped by curiosity, Simon and Chris fire up their twenty year old Volvo that looks, “as rustic and weather-beaten as a Cold War tank” and embark on a quest to drive full circle around this ancient body of water at the birthplace of civilisation.
Driving the Trans-Siberian
by Simon Raven & Chris Raven
Ever had the desire to jump in your car and keep driving? Well, that is precisely what overland travel writers, Chris Raven and Simon Raven, decided to do whilst stacking boxes of frozen oven chips in a -30 degrees freezer. Not being petrol heads and having zero knowledge of the internal combustion engine, the brothers fired up their rusty Ford Sierra Sapphire and headed east. After clocking up over 11,000 miles, quite literally living in the car, they miraculously arrived in the Far Eastern city of Vladivostok in Siberia on the Sea of Japan. What they had in fact done was to drive the entire length of the new Amur Highway before it was finished, which crosses Russia and the notorious Zilov Gap in a 6,200 mile swath of cracked tarmac and potholes. Along the way our trusty heroes drink vodka with Chechen criminals, escape highway robbery, trade banana flavoured condoms with Russian cops, meet the eccentric and plain weird at truck stops in darkest Siberia, endure torturous road conditions and have a race to the finish with the Germans.