Turkey

Antalya is Turkey's most popular holiday destination, attracting over 16 million visitors annually. Located on the southwestern Mediterranean coast, it offers ancient ruins, turquoise waters, and world-class resort hotels.

Belek is Turkey's premier golf and luxury resort destination, home to championship golf courses and some of the country's most exclusive all-inclusive hotels along a pine-backed Mediterranean coastline.

Lara is Antalya's closest resort district to the city center, offering wide sandy beaches, waterfalls nearby, and easy access to shopping and nightlife without leaving the resort atmosphere.

Side combines ancient Roman ruins — including a well-preserved amphitheater right in the town center — with long sandy beaches, making it one of Antalya's most historically rich resort districts.

Kemer sits at the foot of the Taurus Mountains, offering a dramatic combination of pine forests, pebble beaches and marina life — a favorite for travelers who want nature alongside their resort holiday.

Alanya is Antalya's liveliest and most affordable resort district, known for its historic hilltop castle, long beaches and dense concentration of budget-to-mid-range hotels catering especially to Northern European and Russian travelers.

Konyaaltı is Antalya's long pebble beach district on the western edge of the city, backed by the dramatic Beydağları mountains and offering a rare combination of city convenience with a Blue Flag beach right on the doorstep.

Kaş is a small, laid-back harbor town on Antalya's western coast, built into cliffs above the Mediterranean. It trades resort scale for boutique hotels, some of Turkey's clearest water, and a reputation as the country's top scuba diving and paragliding base.

Nevşehir is the provincial capital of Cappadocia and the most practical base for exploring the region — a hillside old town with its own rock-carved castle, close to the underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı and a short drive from Göreme, Ürgüp and Avanos.

Göreme is Cappadocia's best-known base, built directly among fairy-chimney rock formations and next to the Göreme Open Air Museum's rock-cut Byzantine churches. It is the main hot-air balloon launch area and has the region's densest cluster of cave hotels.

Ürgüp is Cappadocia's quieter, more upscale base — a working town with its own bazaar and surrounding vineyards, known for boutique cave-hotel conversions and wine tastings rather than backpacker nightlife.

Avanos sits on the banks of the Kızılırmak (Red River), Turkey's longest river, and has been a pottery-making town for centuries thanks to the local red clay. It is the least touristic of Cappadocia's main bases, with a more everyday, local pace.

Bodrum is a whitewashed harbor town on Turkey's southwest Aegean coast, built around a 15th-century Crusader castle that now houses the Museum of Underwater Archaeology. Its wider peninsula spans a yacht-marina old town, a lively bar street and quieter villages like Gümüşlük, Türkbükü and Yalıkavak.

Marmaris is a pine-forest-backed bay on the Muğla coast, built around one of Turkey's largest yacht marinas and a 16th-century Ottoman castle. It is the traditional starting point for Blue Voyage gulet cruises along the Turquoise Coast and has a long resort promenade and lively nightlife strip.

Fethiye is a harbor town on the Turquoise Coast, built over the ancient Lycian city of Telmessos and marked by rock tombs carved into the cliffs above it. It is the gateway to the Ölüdeniz Blue Lagoon and Babadağ mountain, one of the world's best-known paragliding launch points, plus the Saklıkent Gorge and the abandoned village of Kayaköy.

Datça sits on a narrow, pine-covered peninsula between the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, west of Bodrum, and is known for a slower pace than its larger neighbor, thyme-honey and almond production, and the ancient ruins of Knidos at the peninsula's tip.

Dalyan is a river-delta village between Marmaris and Fethiye, reachable mainly by boat along a channel lined with Lycian rock tombs carved into the cliffs above the ancient city of Kaunos. Its river leads to Iztuzu Beach, a protected nesting site for loggerhead sea turtles, and the village is known for mud baths and a slow, nature-focused pace.

Kuşadası is a major Aegean cruise port and resort town, best known as the gateway to the ancient city of Ephesus and the House of the Virgin Mary. It has a lively bazaar-lined old town, marina, and beach areas including the popular Ladies Beach (Kadınlar Denizi).

Didim is a family-oriented Aegean resort town built beside the ancient Temple of Apollo at Didyma, one of antiquity's largest oracle sanctuaries. Its beach district, Altınkum, is lined with all-inclusive hotels and is quieter and more budget-friendly than Kuşadası or Bodrum.

Söke is an inland agricultural town in Aydın province, known for olive groves and cotton fields rather than beach tourism, and used as a practical base for visiting the ancient cities of Priene, Miletus and the Dilek Peninsula National Park nearby.

Istanbul is the only city in the world spanning two continents, divided by the Bosphorus strait into a European and an Asian side. Its historic peninsula holds Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapı Palace and the Grand Bazaar, while neighborhoods like Beyoğlu, Beşiktaş and Kadıköy carry its modern cultural and nightlife scene.