une nouvelle destination au départ de marseille...

http://www.tourmag.com/Marseille-Turkish-Airlines-volera-vers-Istanbul-a-partir-du-4-juin-2013_a56897.html

Bonjour a tous et toutes,

Nous partons sur l'Opera de Venise le 21/10. Retour le 01/11/12 Trajet habituel en adriarique, senpiternelle escale au Pirée et Katakolon etc... ensuite Istambul , Odessa, Yalta. Nous avons bien vu grace au Forum les choses a visiter en Ukraine, cependant nous n'arrivons pas a nous faire une idée sur le temps et surtout les temperatures a Yalta et Odessa fin Octobre. Si parmi vous il y a des Personnes ayant des informations, nous les en remercions d'avance. Y a t'il d'autres forumers sur ce bateau a ces dates? Merci d'avance pour vos informations

Les « guides » qui accompagnent des groupes ne sont pas insensibles aux moments de magie !

Aux antipodes du « cirage express »

Dernier jour, derniers achats au bazar de Kaleiçi, la vieille ville d’Antalya. Ouf ! Tout le monde aura son petit cadeau. Normal. Sükrü, notre guide turc, m’invite à prendre un thé. Douceur du soleil à la terrasse du café « Ursula », proche des étalages aux mille couleurs, aux mille saveurs. Premier thé, très chaud, petits sablés aux amandes, au chocolat, marbrés. Délicieux. Nous passons la semaine en revue. Les paysages retrouvés, redécouverts. Les moments exceptionnels. L’éclipse solaire. Sa dimension spatiale, spirituelle. Le développement du pays. Ses efforts pour relancer le tourisme.

Nous observons les passants. Leur imaginons un métier, une histoire. Jeu universel. Un homme, sur son tabouret, occupe un mètre carré du trottoir, à l’ombre. Devant lui, un objet finement travaillé, ciselé, décoré. L’homme fixe le sol, patient. Attend en silence. Sükrü se lève, s’assied sur la banquette en face de lui. Enlève ses bottines. Les tend à l’homme. Son dos me cache l’action. Puis revient à notre table, bottines lustrées. Deuxième thé. L’homme se lève, s’approche, se fait payer. « Cinq livres pour des chaussures qui n’en avaient pas besoin ? ». Sükrü : « Mais oui. Il vient d’avoir un garçon, cela va l’aider un peu ». Du coin de l’œil, derrière mes lunettes de soleil, j’observe l’homme. Il regarde mes pieds, mes sandales aux traces de la semaine. Emballé, le tube de « cirage express auto-lustrant » n’a pas quitté le fond de ma valise… L’homme hoche la tête, attend ma réponse. Bon, allons-y… mais j’ai envie de rester au soleil ! Il approche une chaise pour que je puisse y poser mes pieds. Retourne à sa « boîte à faire briller les chaussures ». Lance la procédure, le rituel. Premier chiffon : dépoussiérage en gros. Petite brosse : dépoussiérage des coutures, des recoins, de la semelle. Première fiole : nettoyage humide. Un deuxième chiffon pour sécher. Première boîte, deuxième petite brosse : étalage du cirage noir, avec un soin extrême. Contrôle n’avoir oublié aucun millimètre carré. Troisième petite brosse, pour « gommer » les surplus de cirage. Troisième chiffon, crème nourrissante. Quatrième chiffon, huile de coude : les finitions commencent. Il frotte, frotte, le rythme s’accélère. J’admire. Mes sandales brillent, sont remises à neuf, méconnaissables. Troisième thé. Va, puisqu’il vient d’avoir un garçon, cela l’aidera un peu ! Sourire, petite courbette. Il retourne à sa « boîte » magique, reprend possession de son mètre carré, observe à nouveaux les chaussures qui passent, attend, patient, le prochain client. « çok saol », merci Monsieur, votre petit garçon est entre de bonnes mains.

Le car attend. En route, il me dépose au hammam… autre moment de détente et de remise à neuf !

mariannehon / 11 avril 2006

Avec une capacité de 200 millions de voyageurs/an, le nouvel aéroport d'Istanbul sera le plus grand au monde. Inauguré ces jours-ci, il entrera pleinement en fonction fin 2018 et devrait remplacer à terme aussi l'aéroport actuel d'Atatürk. Lire la suite...

😇Bonjour , nous partons pour une croisiére en Méditterannée avec escale à Istanbul (31/10/2012) que nous souhaitons visiter avec un guide plutot que prendre l'excursion avec le bateau (2 adultes et 1 ado.) . Y a t il quelqu'un qui aurait des coordonnés de guides sérieux francophones et j'ai besoin d'une idée d'une fourchette de prix pour cette prestation .

Comme nous serons au port de 7.30 à 16.30 le laps de temps devrait permettre de faire le Palais de Topkapi , l"incontournable St SOPHIE , la mosquée Bleu et le grd bazar voir éventuellement la citerne et / ou l'hippodrome., mais cala est il réaliste.

Merci de vos infos et de vos réactions . 😏

Hi,

I bought my flight ticket with my first (usual) first name, which appears first on my passport. However, I have two first names on my passport, and of course, it’s mentioned in the machine-readable zone at the bottom.

I booked with Turkish Airlines (through an online agency) for a trip to South Korea.

I wanted to know if it would be a problem that I only used my first first name on the ticket, while my passport has two. I had requested through the agency to add the second first name, but the airline refused because it doesn’t meet their general conditions. (They must have seen that the last name and first name were the same, and only the second first name was added.)

So, my ticket has my last name and first first name correctly spelled, and when I check in online, I’ll enter the passport details correctly.

I’ll have a layover in Istanbul on the flight.

Thanks in advance for your replies. Have a great day.

Hi everyone,

I’m planning a motorcycle road trip to Armenia and Georgia in September 2026 or May 2027. I’m looking for one or more riders (male or female) who’d like to explore these countries with me.

Along the way, we’ll visit Cappadocia, the capitals Yerevan, Tbilisi, Sofia, Skopje, and other cities—we can finalize the route and roadbook later.

This trip requires experience with long motorcycle journeys, as we’ll cover around 7,000 km over 5 or 6 weeks (or more, depending on sightseeing and time spent).

I don’t expect dozens of applicants, since motorcycle riders are few and far between on this forum, but I’m putting this out there anyway.

See you soon

Hi everyone,

I’m planning a motorcycle road trip to Armenia and Georgia in September 2026 or May 2027. I’m looking for one or more riders (male or female) who’d like to explore these countries with me.

Along the way, we’ll visit Cappadocia, the capitals Yerevan, Tbilisi, Sofia, Skopje, and other cities—we can finalize the route and roadbook later.

You’ll need to be experienced with long motorcycle trips, as we’ll cover around 7,000 km over 5 or 6 weeks (or more, depending on how much time we spend sightseeing).

See you soon!

I'm looking to travel to Turkey from Greece by car. Do you know any ferry companies that operate this route? Thanks for your replies

Hey fellow travelers, I’m planning a little trip to Turkey from December 30th to January 11th, around Antalya and the surrounding areas. Sightseeing, some hiking, etc. Gonna soak up this beautiful region. I also wanna check out Cappadocia in winter—it must be magical this time of year. If anyone’s gonna be around, we could share part of the journey together. See you soon! Cheers, Antoine

Hi there! There are so many valleys to discover in Cappadocia—it’s hard to figure out which ones to visit and in what order before you’re actually there. So, I put together a 3-day itinerary after my trip in October, packed with useful info: the cost of visits, how to book a hot-air balloon flight, which valleys to explore, and more. Here’s the link: https://worldseenbymathilde.blogspot.com/2023/10/3-jours-pour-visiter-la-cappadoce.html

Hope this helps! :)

Hi there! We’re planning to head back to Istanbul next year—obviously by plane—and then take the train from Istanbul to Antalya. Has anyone here already made this trip by train with TCDD? I’d love any tips or info that could be useful for us!

Hi everyone,

Since it’s a hot topic, yet rarely shown, and since there’s quite a bit of criticism and prejudice around it—and since I’ve had three in ten days—I’m going to talk about layovers at Istanbul Airport, especially with Turkish Airlines. This is a common scenario for forum members planning trips to Central Asia, the Caucasus, but also Japan, China, Australia, Africa, and more.

It all starts on a plane beginning its descent, knowing that the approach to Istanbul Airport is always quite long—about thirty minutes. Through the windows, if you’re lucky, you get a view of the city. You need to know a little to get your bearings, but here we’re on the side of Sabiha Gökçen Airport, south of Istanbul on the Asian side. You can spot the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and Fenerbahçe’s football stadium.



Landing over highways with three times four lanes, and then the airport tarmac for the taxi phase. This can take a while—sometimes nearly half an hour—but this morning, luck was on my side: barely more than 10 minutes. It’s rare now for Turkish Airlines planes to unload via pax buses, so we got a jet bridge. Avgeeks will immediately notice they’re not in Europe anymore but in another world: Pobeda, Belavia, and plenty of more exotic airlines. As the captain seriously put it in his final announcement after thanking the kids, it’s the “crossroads of the world.”

We suddenly step into a massive corridor, an endless, bright hall, usually deserted, and turn left or right—I think it’s always left for the flights I take, heading toward “transfers.” The walk is supposed to take a good ten minutes at worst. Watch out for airport vehicles—they come fast and don’t honk.



Here’s where it gets interesting: Istanbul has always had a bypass for short layovers, something you never hear about on forums. In the past, you had to bolt out of the jet bridge like a rocket and vaguely show your boarding pass to an attendant before sprinting. But now it’s institutionalized, and there’s signage that spares you from running all the way to the main security check. Until recently—at least the last time I did this—it even let you skip all formalities, dropping you like a wild dog into the departures area, which is spacious enough to stretch your legs!



A heads-up for the young and the not-so-young: even without the bypass, if you’re under 5 (accompanied), over 65 (alone), you get fast track. That saves you a few hundred meters and possibly some waiting time, though I’m less sure about that. The entrance honestly looks like an amusement park, though.



So, not young enough, not old enough, I keep going. I pass by dozens of passport control booths (in blue) and reach the transfer security checkpoint (in red). There’s a fast track for Business and Gold passengers—in my case, I’m both—but since it’s at the wrong end for my direction, it wouldn’t even be worth it. It’d just be a frivolous sprint. None of this is crowded at all; the wait lasted about a minute. You have to take out your laptop at this checkpoint—not all of them—but you haven’t had to take out liquids for a while in Istanbul. A hallway, an escalator, and then—bam—you’re in the Dubai-esque hall. One look says it all. Everything sparkles, everything’s expensive. *Very* expensive. Just for show, I spot a sandwich for around 12 €, and some simits for about 4 € (it’s in TL, but that’s roughly the conversion).



So, I head to the lounge—or one of the lounges—at Turkish Airlines, upstairs. Here too, there’s a priority entrance for families and people with reduced mobility, and an extra hundred meters for everyone else. A few of us seem to have had the same idea, and the twin lounges are under renovation for three months. One is for Business Class passengers, the other for Miles & Smiles and Gold members. They’re nearly identical. Needless to say, it’s packed—just as crowded in one as the other. There are *tons* of Business Class passengers on Turkish Airlines. I assume some other airlines’ passengers are mixed in, but not enough to explain the crowd. It’s as busy as Gare Montparnasse on a holiday departure day, and the 5 or 6 food counters, along with the salad and dessert buffets, are struggling to keep up. I didn’t dare ask to access the shower area, but I’ll admit the Wi-Fi works without the torturous maneuvers it required just a few months ago. Later, I’ll have to watch for the gate for my destination—Warsaw. With my usual luck, it’ll be in the F double-digits, the farthest ones, listed as 15 to 19 minutes away. That said, once you reach the end of that dead end, there’s plenty of quiet space with power outlets. Because here, there’s high demand for kilowatts.

My reporter’s conscience doesn’t go so far as to guide me here—I’ve covered the free access up to the iGA lounge, which has a good reputation but costs nearly 100 € for three hours. Maybe another time, on a promo day—I’ll keep an eye on their site. The piano starts playing “Bésame Mucho,” so I’ll pause my story here.



Michel

hi, I’d like to visit Turkey, or maybe Tunisia—I’m even open to other suggestions, like Egypt, Azerbaijan, or Vietnam. I’ve been traveling solo for a while now, but this time I’d love to share the trip with one or two people. Thanks for your tips!

So Kate and I spent a week in Istanbul. For her, who had already visited, it was a return; for me, a discovery.

As we’ve now made a habit of, I write the texts and she posts her photos. We hope this illustrated story, crafted together, will revive beautiful memories for those who know the city and inspire others to discover it.

Hello everyone,

I’m not really a regular contributor to VoyageForum, but every time Kate and I travel, she encourages me to write a travel journal and publish it. And I must admit, it’s a very enjoyable intellectual exercise, though not always easy. As a VF contributor whose journals I’ve read once said, this retrospective work not only helps preserve memories but also provides a fruitful moment of introspection by bringing back emotions and feelings.

Kate and I spent a week in Istanbul. For her, who had already visited, it was a return; for me, it was a discovery.

As we’ve now made a habit of, I write the texts, and she posts her photos. We hope this illustrated story, crafted together, will revive beautiful sensations for those who know the city and inspire others to discover it. Here we go!

Hello, I’m looking for cycling buddies to bike back from the Mount Ararat region (northeastern Turkey) to Cappadocia, passing through Lake Van. The rest of the route will be decided based on points of interest. We’ll spend several days exploring Cappadocia by bike—it’s huge! From early to late October. Expect some serious elevation gain in this part of the country. We’ll camp or stay in accommodations depending on what’s available. Actually, I’ll be leaving France a bit earlier to attempt the ascent of Mount Ararat (5,137m). I’m 57 years old, have been traveling by bike for a good ten years, and I’m also passionate about mountains. Looking forward to hearing from you! Christine

Hi there, I’m planning to cycle the EuroVelo 8 route from Nice to Izmir in Turkey (about 2,500 km), but I’m not finding much info or tips for this itinerary.

I’d like to leave at the end of September and complete the route in a max of 2 months, as self-sufficiently as possible (I have a tent, sleeping bag, and camping cookware).

Is this a good idea (will it be too cold starting in October)?

Are there any precautions I should take? Any areas to avoid? Since multiple countries are involved.

And are there any places worth visiting that aren’t on the main route?

I’m used to cycle touring in France but not abroad, so I’d appreciate any tips!

Thanks in advance.

Hi there, I’m heading to Turkey soon for a solid month. I was thinking of exploring the Aegean coast, but I’m a bit worried about crowds… even though it’ll be mid-September. Any hidden gems or favorite spots you’d recommend? Quiet beaches, maybe? Thanks for your tips! Patricia

A disastrous experience with Lastminute.com – Family left outside with no assistance

I booked a stay at the Akgun Istanbul Hotel via for a total of 3 884 €. Despite receiving a booking confirmation, the hotel refused to accommodate us. My wife was sick, we had two children with us, and we literally found ourselves outside with no help at all. We had to book another hotel at our own expense, and even with the evidence we provided (medical documents, receipts, exchanges with customer service), only refunded 717 €. Customer service refused to reopen the case, completely ignoring the exceptional circumstances. No gesture, no assistance, no respect.

I strongly advise against using this platform for anyone traveling with family or in sensitive situations. If something goes wrong, you’ll be on your own.

Hello!

I’m planning to spend nearly 3 weeks in the sun in September (from mid-September to October 7th).

I’d prefer a sunny destination. I was thinking of places like Turkey, Greece, an Eastern European country (Georgia, Bulgaria, etc.), the Canary Islands, Portugal, or even South Africa.

The idea is to mix visits to monuments, hikes in parks, and some beach relaxation.

I’m primarily looking for female travel companions for convenience, ideally around my age (I’m 42).

I usually organize my trips solo without going through an agency.

Once there, I’m used to walking a lot and getting around by public transport (train, coach, bus, etc.).

Feel free to message me if you have any questions.

Have a great day! !

Hi there, I’m planning to head to Asia by motorcycle in September. I’d like to know if it’s still possible to cross Iran... If not, what other routes might be feasible in the fall? Thanks in advance for your feedback! Franck

Hi there,

Do you have a hotel near the cruise port (or easy to reach by metro with luggage) to recommend? I’m planning to spend two days there before boarding.

Thanks in advance! Claudine

hi, is there (still) a ferry route between southern Turkey (Iskenderun) and Haifa? direct or not?

I’m from Quebec and I love cruises, but unfortunately my husband doesn’t like flying. I’ve been on several cruises and I’d love to find a companion to share this passion with. Thanks!

I’m looking for a man I met 42 years ago in Calvi, Corsica. His name at the time was Ayat Azir, and he’s Turkish from Izmir. He was in the 2nd REP with the French Foreign Legion. It’s been a long time, but I’d really love to find him again. Thanks for your help.

Hi,

My mom received an invitation for a free stay (though of course it comes with visits to carpet shops, jewelry stores, and other boutiques). She bought a carpet in Turkey about 10 years ago, and it was that carpet shop in Istanbul that sent this invitation. The whole thing is organized by a travel agency called "Habitat VIP Travel." Has anyone here heard of this agency and their "commercial tourism" practices? I’m not against the idea in principle—I just want to make sure it’s legit and not dangerous (I really don’t want to get kidnapped with my nearly 90-year-old mom!). Thanks for your feedback

Hi there. About a month ago, I posted a potential itinerary for Bulgaria and Istanbul, but in the end, since we found some relatively cheap flight tickets to Istanbul, we decided to go for a trip to Turkey instead.

When? 2 weeks, late August (14th to 29th) Who? Dad, mom, a 17-year-old teen, and an 11-year-old child

Here’s our plan: do you think it’s doable? Any practical tips?

We start with 4 full days in Istanbul (5 nights) Then, we rent a car and head to Ephesus. We stay there for 1 day (2 nights) After that, we drive to Kaş. We stay there for 4 full days (5 nights), enough time to relax a bit, see Kaputaş Beach and Kekova, the site of Myra, the site of Patara, and possibly the site of Çıralı/Olympos—even though it’s a bit far—and Saklıkent Gorge. From Kaş, we spend 2 nights near Denizli to see Pamukkale and Aphrodisias. Is it possible to visit both sites in the same day? Then, we travel from Pamukkale back to Istanbul, return the car, and spend one last night in Istanbul.

Thanks for your thoughts!

Hi everyone,

I’d like to do a 5-month motorcycle road trip from Turkey to Vietnam. To do this, I’d like to buy a used bike locally. Do you know what steps are involved (especially the administrative ones for insurance, registration, etc.)? Are they quick? And do you know any reliable places to buy a used motorcycle?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.