Troy-tour van een hele dag vanuit Istanbul: lunch inbegrepen

Good actual tour, lots of good history provided (my husband studied Ancient History so we feel able to judge critically and the guide was good), nice to take the ferry across the by the Dardanelles. However, the driver on the way back left a lot to be desired. The place he stopped for food served genuinely some of the worst food I’ve ever eaten and in Turkey that takes special effort because almost all food is delicious. He also decided to drop our family, the only group with a kid, off dead last at 9:40 at night, after dropping couples and individual adult travelers off earlier— including when our hotel was literally about a 2 minute drive from other stops he made earlier and after which he then drove back across the water over by the Tower, and then back to Sultanahmet dropping us off dead last— strapped with a more-tired-than-needed kid because he’d been riding around in the van for an extra 30-40 minutes beyond what was needed. Tour operator should tell drivers to prioritize dropping off families first, and find a better stopping point on the way back. Food was just horrifically bad.

Everything was pretty much as advertised. However, having done the tour it just didn’t seem worth spending the whole day cooped up in a van for what was essentially a one hour tour around the small site at Troy. The food, stops along the way etc were nothing special. Confirming we left the hotel at around 6:30am and were back at 9:30pm. The drivers, guides and quality of the transportation were all good. I think you just have to really want to go to Troy.

Tour of Troy itself is great; nice to take the ferry. Only real way to do this in one day from Istanbul, I think. However, the driver on the way back made some strange choices like driving on an unpaved farm road rather than the clearly immediately visible highway to Istanbul. May have slowed us down, and we were running behind schedule then anyway. Rest stop on the way back was BAD— terrible food, some of the worst I’ve eaten anywhere in the world. I’m sure better options were available (Turkey has great food!). Also super unhelpful that the driver left us, the family with the young overtired child LAST to drop off, crisscrossing Sultanahmet several times before he dropped us off at 9:30PM. It would have been nice if an effort had been made to drop the tired kid and his tired parents off the roughly 30- minutes before when the first guests were dropped off just down the street (if we’d realized, we would have gotten out there and walked instead of crossing the bridge to over by the tower and then back to Sultanahmet for three more stops before we were the last ones to be dropped off), but we did not until it was too late. If you do this with a kid in tow, insist on being dropped off first…