What a visitor's money does in Turkey: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Turkish Lira (TRY) · 1 EUR = 56 TRY · 1 USD = 48 TRY (moves quickly)
The lira has been highly volatile, so exchange small amounts frequently rather than all at once. Independent exchange shops in Eminönü and Grand Bazaar give far better rates than banks or the airport — look for the ones with no commission and a tight spread.
Avoid: Euronet, airport arrivals machines, ATMs inside the Grand Bazaar
Use: Garanti BBVA, İş Bankası, Akbank, Yapı Kredi
Turkish ATMs now charge substantial foreign-card fees, so exchanging cash at a reputable office often beats withdrawing.
A short ride in Istanbul: 150–350 ₺ across town — cheap
From the airport: Istanbul airport to Sultanahmet 900–1,400 ₺, and it is 50km
The same metered taxis. The app matters because it records the ride and the driver cannot refuse a short fare quietly.
Etli ekmek — a metre of flatbread with minced lamb, cut with scissors — is the Konya dish and the reason to have an empty stomach on arrival. Fırın kebab, tirit, and the city’s famous pistachio helva. Most restaurants serve no alcohol, which is simply the city.
Southeastern and Arab: kaburga dolması (stuffed lamb ribs), içli köfte, and mardin’s own sour dishes with pomegranate molasses. Coffee with cardamom, and menengiç coffee made from terebinth. Almond sweets in the bazaar.
Urfa kebab, which is the mild one to Adıyaman’s hot; çiğ köfte, kneaded for an hour and eaten raw, which was invented here; and şıllik for pudding. Menengiç coffee and mirra, the bitter coffee poured in a thimble. No alcohol in most of the city.
This is the reason to come. Baklava with Antep pistachio at Imam Çağdaş or Güllüoğlu; beyran soup for breakfast, which is lamb and garlic at seven in the morning; katmer, a pistachio pastry, also for breakfast; and forty kinds of kebab. Budget two days and no lunch plans.
Van kahvaltısı is the reason half the visitors come: twenty small plates, otlu peynir (herbed cheese), murtuğa, kavut, and bread that keeps arriving, on a street of breakfast halls that serve nothing else. Later: incı kefal, the lake fish, and çiğ köfte.
Amasya apples, the small tart ones, in everything from the juice to the dessert; keskek at a wedding if you are lucky enough; and bakla dürme, the broad-bean roll, which is the town’s own.
Boyoz, the Sephardic pastry, for breakfast with a boiled egg; kumru sandwiches; midye dolma from a street cart; and the best fish on the Aegean along the Kordon and in Çeşme Altı. Cheaper and better a street back from the water.
Fish on the promenade, and the strait’s own — sardines in spring. Peynir helvası for pudding, which is Çanakkale’s. The student town means cheap kebabs and late kitchens.
Pension half board is how most people eat here and it is good: village breakfast, and a set dinner of meze and grilled meat under the trees. Olympos has the young crowd and the bars; Çıralı has families and no noise.
The pensions in Kâhta and the villages on the mountain feed their guests, and that is the choice. Adıyaman is the nearest town with restaurants. Take water up; there is one tea stall at the car park and nothing else.
Black Sea cooking, and nothing like the rest of the country: hamsi (anchovies) fried, in rice, even in bread; muhlama, which is cornmeal and melted cheese; kuymak for breakfast; and Black Sea tea, grown on the hills you are looking at.
İskender kebab was invented here and the two families who claim it are both still open; the argument is part of the meal. Kestane şekeri — candied chestnuts — to take home, and İnegol köfte on the road out.
Safranbolu lokum with saffron, bought where it is made rather than at the coach stop; saffron tea; and the town’s kuyu kebağı — lamb cooked in a pit — at Sunday lunch. Village breakfast in a courtyard is the meal to plan for.
The village pensions cook for their guests and that is most of the eating: gözleme, grilled fish, tomatoes that taste of something. One or two restaurants on the village street; nothing at all on the beach but a single cafe.
Ankara tava, and the city’s long love of the kebab houses on Bahçelievler 7. Cadde; simit and çay for breakfast anywhere; and beypazarı kurusu, the dry biscuit, from the town of the same name up the road.
Breakfast (kahvaltı) is a proper spread and a highlight — do it in Beşiktaş or Kadıköy. Skip restaurants with touts outside in Sultanahmet; cross to the Asian side for far better prices.
Testi kebab — meat slow-cooked in a sealed clay pot that is cracked open at the table — is the local dish and worth having once, at a place that does not have a man outside inviting you in. Cappadocia is also wine country: Kalecik Karası and the local Emir grape are poured everywhere and are better than their reputation.
Piyaz — a white bean salad with tahini — is the Antalya dish nobody outside the city knows, and it comes with şiş köfte. Eat away from the harbour: the places on the road out to Konyaaltı charge half what the marina does. Fresh figs and pomegranate juice from a street cart in autumn.
This is inland Aegean cooking: tandır lamb cooked in a pit, and şiş köfte. The village restaurants are aimed squarely at coach tours; eat in Denizli instead, where the kebab is better and a third of the price.
Selçuk’s town restaurants cook better and cost a third of the ones at the gates: çöp şiş, gözleme from a village woman’s griddle, and the Saturday market for figs, peaches and olives. Şirince, up the hill, does fruit wine and lunch with a view.
Fish on the harbour, Russian and German menus everywhere because of who comes, and better Turkish food up the hill in the old quarter around the castle road. Bananas grow here and the juice is worth stopping for.
River fish — mullet and sea bass from the delta — at the riverfront restaurants, where the view is the price. The Saturday market is one of the best on the coast. Honey, olives and dried figs to take away.
Almonds, and the almond ırmık helva; fish in the fishing villages down the peninsula rather than in Datca town; and the olive oil, which people drive here for. Eski Datca’s courtyard restaurants are the evening.
Fethiye’s fish market is the meal: buy the fish at a stall and one of the restaurants around it cooks it for a fee. Meze, çöp şiş, and the Tuesday market for everything else. Ölüdeniz prices are twice Fethiye’s.
Fish and meze at the harbour, and better and cheaper in the back streets; the Friday market for fruit; and Kalkan up the road, which is where people go out to dinner. The breakfast places on the hill do a village spread that fills the day.
The restaurants inside the ruins charge for the view; Manavgat and the back streets do the same food for half. Fish from the river, şiş, and the ice cream sellers on the harbour who make a performance of it.
The marina restaurants are for the boats and priced for them; the back streets behind the bazaar cook the same fish for a third. Pine honey, which is this coast’s, and the Tuesday market for it.
Fish at the harbour, priced by the kilo and worth agreeing before it is cooked; village breakfast in Behramkale with the olive oil the peninsula is known for; and the olives themselves, which are the best in the country.
Aegean meze and fish: order a table of cold meze and let the fish be secondary. Gümüşlük on the west of the peninsula is where locals eat, with tables on the sand and octopus that was caught that morning. Avoid the marina strip unless someone else is paying.
Kumru, the Çeşme sandwich, from a stand on the harbour; sakizli everything, because the mastic comes from Chios across the water; and Alaçatı’s herb dishes — wild greens with eggs — at breakfast. Alaçatı prices are Istanbul prices in August.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
IstanbulTurkeyTwo continents, three empires, one enormous city
CappadociaTurkeyTwo hundred balloons at dawn over a landscape carved from volcanic ash
AntalyaTurkeyA Roman old town on a cliff, with the Taurus mountains behind the beach
BodrumTurkeyA white town around a crusader castle, and a gulet waiting in the bay
PamukkaleTurkeyA hillside of white mineral terraces, with a Roman spa city on top of it
Ephesus & SelçukTurkeyThe best-preserved classical city on the Mediterranean: a marble street down to a library facade, a theatre for twenty-five thousand, and a country town beside it
Fethiye & ÖlüdenizTurkeyA working harbour town with Lycian tombs above the rooftops, the most photographed lagoon in Turkey next door, and paragliders coming off a 1,900-metre ridge all day
Çeşme & AlaçatıTurkeyA windsurfing bay, a stone village of blue shutters and bougainvillea, thermal beaches and the smartest summer crowd in Turkey
KaşTurkeyA white town on a cliff over water clear enough to see the wreck below it: the diving capital of Turkey, a sunken city offshore, and Greece twenty minutes away
SideTurkeyA Roman temple on a headland with the sea behind its columns, a theatre for fifteen thousand, and a beach either side of the ruins
AlanyaTurkeyA Seljuk castle on a rock between two beaches, a red tower over the old dockyard, and the longest warm season on the Turkish coast
MarmarisTurkeyA yacht harbour in a pine-covered bay, the start of every blue cruise, and a bar street that is the loudest on the Aegean
İzmirTurkeyTurkey’s third city and its most relaxed: a seafront promenade that walks for kilometres, a bazaar older than the republic, and Ephesus an hour down the line
ÇanakkaleTurkeyThe town on the Dardanelles where the ferries cross to Europe, with Troy on one side and the Gallipoli battlefields on the other
Olympos & ÇıralıTurkeyRuins in a river valley that comes out on a pebble beach, treehouse pensions in the orange groves, and a hillside that has been on fire since antiquity
DalyanTurkeyA river town under Lycian tombs cut in the cliff, with mud baths upstream, a turtle beach downstream and boats instead of roads between them
Mount NemrutTurkeyStone heads of gods and a forgotten king on a 2,150-metre summit, watched at sunrise by everyone who made the drive up in the dark
TrabzonTurkeyA Black Sea port under tea plantations, with a monastery glued to a cliff face an hour inland and green hills that look like nowhere else in Turkey
AssosTurkeyA temple to Athena on a cliff over the Aegean, a fishing harbour of stone houses underneath it, and Lesbos close enough to count the lights
BursaTurkeyThe first Ottoman capital under a mountain that skis in winter: green mosques, a silk bazaar, thermal baths, and the dish the whole country argues about
SafranboluTurkeyAn Ottoman merchant town kept whole: white timber houses down a gorge, a caravanserai to sleep in, and the saffron it is named for
KonyaTurkeyThe city of Rumi: the green dome over his tomb, the whirling dervishes who still turn here, and a Seljuk capital under the modern one
PataraTurkeyEighteen kilometres of empty sand behind a ruined Lycian capital, with loggerhead turtles nesting on it and a rule that keeps the beach closed at night because of them
Datca & KnidosTurkeyA long thin peninsula of almond trees between two seas, with an ancient city at the end of it where the Aegean meets the Mediterranean
MardinTurkeyA city of honey-coloured stone stacked up a hill over the Mesopotamian plain, with Syriac monasteries around it and Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish in the same street
Şanlıurfa & Göbekli TepeTurkeyThe oldest temple in the world on a hill outside a pilgrimage city of carp pools, covered bazaars and the best kebab in Turkey
GaziantepTurkeyThe food capital of Turkey: pistachio baklava by the kilo, a museum of Roman mosaics that stops people mid-sentence, and a bazaar of coppersmiths
VanTurkeyA city on the biggest lake in Turkey, under a rock fortress with cuneiform on it, with an Armenian church on an island and a breakfast that runs to twenty plates
AmasyaTurkeyOttoman houses reflected in a green river, with the rock tombs of Pontic kings cut into the cliff above them and a castle on top
AnkaraTurkeyThe capital Atatürk built on the steppe: the museum that holds Anatolia’s whole prehistory, his mausoleum above the city, and a castle with a village inside it