Turkey: Bosphorus to Balloons, 7 Nights

Land at Istanbul Airport on the European side and transfer to the hotel around Sultanahmet or Taksim. The evening is free to walk to the Hippodrome or Istiklal Street. Change some euros to lira at a doviz office rather than the airport, where the rate is roughly a tenth worse.

A guided day across the old peninsula: Hagia Sophia, a cathedral for 900 years and a mosque for 500; the Blue Mosque with its six minarets; the Hippodrome obelisks; and Topkapi Palace, where the treasury and the harem quarters are the two rooms worth the queue. Afternoon in the Grand Bazaar, 4,000 shops under one roof since 1461.

Morning at Dolmabahce Palace on the waterfront, where the Ottoman court moved in 1856 and where Ataturk died — the ceremonial hall holds a four-tonne Bohemian chandelier. Then the Spice Bazaar at Eminonu for Turkish delight, saffron and pistachio. In the evening a Bosphorus dinner cruise sails between two continents with a Turkish night show of folk dance and a whirling dervish set.

A morning flight to Nevsehir or Kayseri, then straight into the landscape: Devrent valley, where the tuff has weathered into camels and seals, and Pasabag, where the fairy chimneys carry mushroom caps. At Avanos on the Kizilirmak river a potter works red clay on a kick wheel exactly as they have for three thousand years. Your hotel tonight is carved into rock.

If you booked the balloon, pick-up is at 4.30 am and you are back for breakfast. The day itself covers the Goreme open-air museum, where eleventh-century frescoes survive inside rock-cut chapels, then Kaymakli underground city, eight storeys deep with ventilation shafts and rolling stone doors. Finish at Uchisar castle above Pigeon valley for sunset.

Fly down to the Mediterranean coast and check in on the Lara or Konyaalti strip. In the afternoon you see the Lower Duden falls, where the river drops forty metres straight off a cliff into the sea, and walk Kaleici, the walled Roman old town behind Hadrian's Gate, built in AD 130 for the emperor's visit.

Nothing fixed. The pebble beach at Konyaalti sits directly below the Taurus mountains and the water stays swimmable into November. Popular optionals are a boat trip to the Gulf of Antalya caves, the ancient theatre at Aspendos, or the cable car up Tunektepe for the whole bay in one view.

Breakfast and transfer to Antalya Airport for the connection home through Istanbul. Turkish delight and evil-eye glass travel fine in hand baggage; the pottery from Avanos should go in the hold, wrapped in the clothes you no longer need.