Cappadocia
Turkey
Two hundred balloons at dawn over a landscape carved from volcanic ash
Photo by Timur Garifov on Unsplash
Photos by Darren Lee, Alain Bonnardeaux, Burak Arslan and Kaan Kosemen on Unsplash
Best time to visit all of Turkey
April to June, September to October
Climate month by month
The next sixteen daysOpen-Meteo
Average high and low · °C
Rainfall · mm per month
Best months to visit This month · wettest 55mm in Mar
Where it is
38.64°N, 34.83°E Open in Google Maps
Things to do
Weeks of it- Go up in a balloon at sunrise, and book the first morning of your stay
- Walk the Rose and Red valleys at the end of the day
- Go down into Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı
- See the frescoes in the Göreme rock churches
- Watch the sunset from Uçhisar or Sunset Point
- Sleep in a cave room — most of the good hotels are dug into the rock
Cappadocia travel tipsthe general rules
Currency budget Turkey
Good valueThe lira moves fast, so change small amounts often rather than everything on arrival, and check the rate the morning you change it. Balloon flights and cave hotels are usually quoted in euros and payable by card; everything else — dolmuş fares, village lunches, the pottery you will inevitably buy — is lira and often cash.
ATMs & cards
Use Garanti BBVA, İş Bankası or Ziraat machines in Göreme, Ürgüp or Avanos. Turkish ATMs charge a foreign-card fee that has grown steep, so take out larger amounts less often, and always decline the machine’s own conversion.
Avoid these
- Euronet
- machines inside hotels and tour offices
Use these instead
- Garanti BBVA
- İş Bankası
- Ziraat Bankası
- Akbank
Turkish banks now charge a substantial fee per foreign-card withdrawal, so take out more and less often.
Wherever you are: if the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline. That is dynamic currency conversion and the rate is set by the ATM's operator, not your bank.
Safety all of Turkey
Very safeA very safe place with one genuine risk, and it is the balloons: flights are cancelled for wind more often than visitors expect, so book for your first morning and keep the next two free rather than the other way round. Fly with an operator that publishes its licence. In the valleys, carry water in summer and note that the paths are unfenced above long drops.
Where to walk, and where to pay attention (6 areas)
Worth more attention
- Rose Valley — and the other valleys alone at dusk — the trails are unmarked and people get lost
- Balloon operators without a proper licence, and quad tours on the same trails as walkers
Our own assessment, not a sourced index.
Entry & visa Turkey visa rules
No visa neededup to 90 days
90 days within any 180-day period.
Other passports
e-Visa requiredup to 90 days$43-$60
Applied for online in minutes. Buy it only from evisa.gov.tr — the lookalike sites charge several times the real fee.
Visa required in advance
How to get it: The e-visa is issued online at evisa.gov.tr, usually within an hour. Print it or keep it on your phone; airlines check it at the gate.
Entry rules change often and depend on your passport, not where you live — the official page above is the authority, and the airline checks before you board.
Health & emergencies all of Turkey
Good and affordableRequired to enter
No vaccinations are required for entry from Europe or North America.
Jabs worth having, and what happens if you need a doctor
Worth having
- Routine vaccinations up to date
- Hepatitis A
- Typhoid if you will eat widely outside restaurants
Getting treated
Private hospitals in Istanbul are genuinely excellent and a fraction of Western European prices, with English spoken in the international departments. State hospitals are free for emergencies but slow and rarely English-speaking. Insurance is strongly advised — you will be asked to pay up front at private hospitals.
Tap water is chlorinated but heavily mineralised; almost everyone drinks bottled.
Orientation, not medical advice — entry rules change and what you need depends on your own history. Check with a travel clinic four to six weeks before you go.
Food tip
Very goodTesti 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.
Nightlife
Cave bars and terrace wine under a sky full of stars, and an alarm set for 04:30 that ends every evening early.
- Göreme — the cave bars and the backpacker crowd
- Ürgüp — wine bars, and the local vineyards
- Uçhisar — terrace views rather than a scene
Closing: 01:00, and most of the valley is asleep by eleven.
A beer in a bar: 70–140 TRY
The balloons launch at dawn and are cancelled for wind about a third of the time — a night out before is a gamble on both.
Getting around
Workable- UberWorks here
- BiTaksiWorks here
- BoltNot here
BiTaksi the Istanbul taxi app · Uber which dispatches those same taxis
- Against a taxi
- The same metered taxis. The app matters because it records the ride and the driver cannot refuse a short fare quietly.
Private ride-hailing is illegal in Turkey; everything on the app is a licensed yellow taxi.
Time zone and your working day
Europe/Istanbul — 7 hours ahead of you
1 hour of overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are — 09:00–10:00 your time, 16:00–17:00 theirs.
No overlap with a 09:00–17:00 day where you are. Working from here means one of you keeps odd hours — their day starts at 02:00 on your clock.
office hours both at once night
Their 09:00–17:00 is 02:00–10:00 on yours.
The difference from the UK, Europe, the US and ten more
Worked out against America/New York, which is where this request looks like it came from.
Internet speedall of Turkey
Why these are Turkey's numbers and not Cappadocia's
Home broadband — Fair. Video calls and streaming for one or two people — fine for a holiday, thin for a household working. Broadband here runs at 65% of the global median of 130 Mbps.
Mobile data — Good. Maps, calls and streaming, and enough to tether a laptop for an afternoon. Mobile runs at 1.2× the global median of 109 Mbps.
Ookla publishes no separate figure for Cappadocia, so these are medians for all of Turkey. Cities usually beat the national number and remote islands and national parks fall well below it — treat this as the country's shape, not as a measurement of the street you will be staying on.
A median is the middle of every connection tested there, old copper and new fibre together — so in a country part-way through laying fibre it sits well below what a fibre line actually delivers, and a rental on one can run several times this number. Half of the connections are slower; a fibre flat is rarely one of them. It says what a place can do, not what your rental does, so every listing on Holistay carries its own measured speed and the date it was tested.
Getting online: Airalo or Holafly — a data eSIM for Turkey, installed before you fly and working the moment you land.
Source: Ookla Speedtest Global Index · measured June 2026
Must-see
Nearby day trips
Say a few words
Turkish
- HelloMerhabaMER-ha-ba
- PleaseLütfenLOOT-fen
- Thank youTeşekkürlerte-shek-koor-LER
- Yes / NoEvet / HayırEH-vet / HA-yuhr
4 more phrases
- Excuse meAffedersinizaf-fe-DER-si-niz
- How much is it?Ne kadar?neh ka-DAR
- The bill, pleaseHesap, lütfenheh-SAP
- Cheers!Şerefe!sheh-reh-FEH
Religion
Sunni Muslim, secular state
Around 99% Muslim by heritage, but the state is constitutionally secular and Istanbul is cosmopolitan. Women cover their heads to enter mosques, everyone removes shoes, and mosques close to visitors during the five prayer times.
Do's and don'ts
Do
- Accept the offered tea — refusing it outright dismisses the gesture
- Take shoes off entering a home or mosque
- Cover shoulders and knees at mosques; women cover their hair, and scarves are lent at the door
- Haggle in the bazaars, politely and with humour
Don't
- Do not point the sole of your foot at anyone, or cross your legs so it shows
- Do not blow your nose at the table
- Do not make jokes about Atatürk; insulting him is a criminal offence
- Do not photograph people, especially women, without asking
Where to stay in Cappadocia
No Holistay rentals in Cappadocia yet — the platform is just opening up. Every listing here will have a video tour and the option to negotiate the nightly price directly with the host.
In the meantime, here is Cappadocia on the sites that do have the inventory — each search is already filled in:
- Booking.com hotels, guesthouses and apartments — the widest coverage almost everywhere
- Airbnb whole homes and apartments, and the better option for a week or more
How to get there
Fly into Nevşehir Kapadokya NAV
45 minfrom the airport· 30 km as the crow flies
45 min to Göreme.
Also worth pricing: Kayseri ASR — an hour away, with more flights and lower fares.
Google Flights · Rome2Rio for the trains, buses and ferries as well as the flights
