rjean, thanks for the info on City of Sultans. Someone asked about it last week on the forum, but none of us had ever heard of it. It's always nice to have a recommendation for another good tour company.

Jo

Jo

I know what you mean. We were worried and anxious too for the same reason because we planned our trip in short space of time (one week prior to leaving) due to last minute cancellations of our long-planned cruise to Greece by the cruise co. due to labor strikes causing the ship to be incomplete and not ready for sailing. Since we were originally spending the first days in Istanbul anyway, we decided to tour the rest of Turkey. Our on-line research led us to several tours companies in Turkey - it was very competitivw and we selected COS. we were very pleased with them - we are used to taking tours and have used several escorted tours before to China, italy, Spain & Portugal, Thailand ,France etc. We enjoyed the small groups and were pleasantly surprise that were a couple of days when the tour was completely private - this included one day in Istanbul and one day in Cappadocia.

rjean,

What a horribly unpleasant surprise that last minute cancellation of your Greece trip must have been! I'm so glad to hear that your trip with COS worked out so well and that you had such a fantastic time in Turkey instead...and also that COS was able to organize everything for you within such a short period of time. Again, thanks so much for bringing the company to our attention.

Jo

Also just used COS. On the whole very good and we enjoyed our trip. We are normally independent travelers but with limited time and the guidebook warnings about difficulties of traveling in Turkey we decided to book with COS - 8-day tour by plane - they were helpful and friendly throughout. Only a few minor reservations - the promise of a cellphone for use in Turkey did not materialize (another traveler had the same problem) - their claim of tour groups of 2- 10 people turned out to be not true in two instances (one of about 20 to Hieropolis and about 25 in Istanbul). They do use other tour companies for some of the tours and in Kusadasi someone changed the tour company at the last minute and we were not told the pick-up would be at 8am, not 9am. But these are minor complaints and, for Turkey, we thought they were really good. Incidentally, the guidebooks are overly pessimistic about the hassle and difficulty of traveling independently in Turkey and we certainly believe it would be fairly easy, although it was nice to have someone else to drive the three hours from Kusadasi to Pergamon and to Pamukkale

How do you get ahold of City of Sultans tours? I just looked on line and that website is 'parked'. Kerri k.

Yeah, Rjean, how to get in touch with City of Sultans agency that you've mentioned ?

Thanks

Hi,

City of Sultans tours is at the following website:

http://www.cityofsultans.com/

cheers,

We traveled to Turkey this past November and used City of Sultans. We found them to be reasonably priced, reliable, and attentive to our needs. Just about every detail was handled by them, which meant our vacation was virtually hassle-free. Our domestic airfare, transports, and lodging were charged to our credit card in advance, so we didn't need to worry about currency conversion or carrying lots of cash once we arrived in the country.

Our tour guides were knowledgeable and professional in every sense of the word. The places where we stopped to have lunch on our tour served, by and large, delicious ethnic food. As far as hotel accommodations go, we used primarily Silver and Gold package lodging options and were not disappointed; in fact, they surpassed our expectations!

The City of Sultans helped to make our trip to Turkey a memorable one. We highly recommend their services to anyone wishing to experience Turkey in the most pleasant way possible...you simply can't go wrong.

City of Sultans was a reasonable tour company but there are things to be aware of. The guides in cities other than Istanbul are contracted out by the company and in our case, turned out to be much superior to the City of Sultans guide we had in Istanbul, who blatantly lied to us to save money. He told us the harems were closed or "not worth seeing" in some palaces when it turns out that it just costs more money to get in. The mobile phone was not given until the third day and then we had to run around to buy a card to get minutes and there was trouble loading up the phone with the card. The tours were loaded with "demonstrations" which are just high pressure sales to buy carpets or pottery and wasted a lot of valuable time. The "free" lunches thrown in the packages are also sometimes at the carpet/handicraft stores or at mediocre restaurants with pre-fixed menus. The convenience of a packeage tour cannot be beat in a new country but I would recommend shopping around and comparing with other operators.