Turkey Boutique 14-Day Private & Small-Group Guided Tour

We just returned from our 14 day Turkey tour with Curio Travel and we had an amazing time seeing so many different parts and sights in Turkey. We picked this tour because Turkey had been on our bucket list for a long time and it included all the places in Turkey we wanted to visit. We were on a private tour and our guide Orkan took us to local restaurants every day for lunch and suggested different foods for us to try. He was with us the whole trip and guided us through all the places we saw, Istanbul, Cappadocia, Konya , the Turqouise coast , Pamukkale, and Selchuk/Ephesus. It was very windy in Cappadocia so we were unable to take our balloon ride there but we did a balloon ride at sunrise in Pamukkale which was a highlight of our trip. Our driver Ferit was an excellent driver who was with us everywhere but Istanbul and navigated us from Cappadocia to Ephesus. All our airport transfers were perfectly handled and we felt well taken care of the whole time. Thank you Curio Travel for such an enjoyable trip to Turkey!

Let me first say that Turkey was a fantastic country to visit, we just loved it. We also loved the places with visited in a few cities and villages and the hotels were great. The problem was our guide Tan. We were supposed to be a small group and ended up being on a private tour. Even if that guide said he was there at gate 13 on our arrival, he was NOT. There were a lot of guides with guests names , but not ours. Finally, I looked so in need of help, that a guide after looking at my voucher, made some calls and told me someone from Curio was coming. A few minutes later there's Tan , saying he was there all along and that I'd just passed him and not not see him, NOT true. For the three days in Istanbul, he sat at lunch with us and we had to pay for his meals even in one of his friends' fancy restaurant. After Istanbul, he stayed with the driver for lunch, but when it was time to pay, he always came to discuss with the owner or the waiter, I couldn't understand a thing, but we started to notice that our lunch bills were always a little too high, but not enougn to get too suspicious. Then one day, as I was to pay my bill, he took it from the waiter and changed the amount to a higher one, saying that there was an error, and gave me the new price. Even the waiter looked surprise. I was so scared of getting in any trouble , that I just let it go till the next lunch. On the next day, we just had 2 pider and 2 cokes, which amounted to 160 TL .. When I got the bill it was 350 TL and I then exploded in front of the 2 waiters. They were 2 experienced waiters. So who comes running, talking very fast in Turkish, our dear guide Tan. Now they start to discuss and argue. Finally Tan explains that they had made an error and had added the driver's and his lunch to my bill. So they recalculated everything. Tan went to pay his bill. I stayed with the 2 waiters, took Google translator and told them that I knew it was not there fault or mistake, but our guide doing You should have seen how happy they were that I understood was was going on. We started to talk with the Google translator and explained what had been happening now for a few days. Then it stopped. He knew I was watching very closely all my bills. He also told me that the tip I gave to the driver from the airport was not enough. Maybe he was right because I was doing the math in $Can. But just the same this is just to show you the type. He was a real Control Freak on everything and ruined a great part of a trip we had been planning for the last 3 years. His name is Tan Ergen, do not accept him as a guide; we should have done something on day one, but didn't know any better!!