Istanbul, Bosphorus & Black Sea — Seven Nights

Day 1-4

Istanbul

Old city + Bosphorus villages + Balat art walk.

Your first four nights are in Istanbul, where your boutique hotel in Beyoğlu becomes a kind of home base. You'll spend a full day in the old city with a resident historian — Hagia Sophia, Topkapı Palace, and the Basilica Cistern, all brought to life with stories that reach back centuries. Another morning, you take a private Bosphorus cruise on a wooden boat, sailing north past palaces, fortresses, and fishing villages, all the way to the mouth of the Black Sea. One afternoon, your guide takes you to Balat, the old Jewish quarter, where the houses are painted in pastels, the streets are steep and cobbled, and the cafés serve Turkish coffee in silence. By day four, you've moved beyond the monuments and into the city's rhythm.

Day 5

Fly to Trabzon

Private transfer up the Black Sea to a boutique yayla lodge.

After breakfast, you fly north to Trabzon, where the landscape shifts from the Bosphorus to the Black Sea — forested, green, and utterly different. Your driver collects you from the airport and takes you up into the Kaçkar mountains to a boutique yayla lodge, perched high in the highlands with wooden balconies, open fires, and views over the valleys. The air is crisp, the silence is profound, and by evening, you're wrapped in blankets on the terrace, sipping mountain tea and watching the mist roll through the pines.

Day 6

Sumela Monastery

Private day trip to the cliffside monastery, mountain lunch.

Your guide collects you after breakfast for a private day trip to Sumela Monastery, one of Türkiye's most dramatic and least-known monuments. Built into a sheer cliff face 1,200 metres above the Altındere Valley, it was founded in 386 AD by Greek monks and clings to the rock like a painting. You'll climb the steep path to the entrance, walk through the frescoed chapel, and stand on the terrace overlooking the forested gorge below. The silence is profound, the setting is breathtaking, and the history is overwhelming. Afterwards, you stop for a long mountain lunch at a family-run lokanta — fresh trout, corn bread, and local cheese. By late afternoon, you're back at the lodge, feet up, fire lit.

Day 7

Farewell

Return flight, private transfer home.

Your final morning is slow and reluctant. One last breakfast by the fire, one last walk through the highland meadows, one last cup of mountain tea on the terrace. By late morning, your driver takes you to Trabzon airport for your return flight to Istanbul and your onward connection home. You leave the Black Sea with a sense of having touched something rare — a quieter, greener Türkiye that almost no one sees, and a landscape you'll carry with you for years.