Tours in Ephesus, Turkey

[Miss Jolly]

We were in Kusadasi with the MS Rotterdam last year 2006.

I booked transportation to Ephesus through www.kusadasitaxi.net

The website is in German and in English.

We were met outside the terminal by the owner, Mr. Erkan Özcetin, a very friendly and helpful man.

A half day tour costs 39 Euros, entrance fee Ephesus ( approx. 4 Euros) NOT included. The price is not per person, but for a taxi (airconditioned) up to 6 persons.

Once in Ephesus, we hired one of the many licensed guides, that will be waiting for you at the entrance. The guide cost us approx. 30 Euros.

We can really recommend him.

We will also be on Rotterdam and we are interested in this approach to seeing Ephesus - shore excursions for a family of four on a 39 day cruise are certainly adding up in cost. Could you please explain what you actually saw for this 30 Euros? Did the one price of 30 euro cover your whole group?

Thank you for your help.

Jennie

[Lindypc]

I have just returned from the March 5, 2007 Inaugural sailing of the Carnival Freedom and must sing the highest praises of Mesut Yilmaz of Ephesus private tours. If you put the world wide web at the front and finish with a dot com you will have his web page. This cruise was a trip of a lifetime and we visited some glorious places and had some outstanding tours but our tour of Ephesus was not only the highlight of this sailing but perhaps the highlight of our lives. We have had the good fortune to travel extensively in Europe, Russia, the US, Mexico and of course the Caribbean (both land and cruises) but Mesut’s tour has been the most outstanding—I can’t think of enough superlatives! Because of a recommendation here at cruise critic I contacted him 5 months prior to sailing. He IMMEDIATELY wrote me back and during this period we probably had 80 emails between us.

Mesut met us at the port of Izmir, Turkey when we disembarked. There were 9 people in our group (3 flaked out on us, much to my chagrin—I recommend that if you are organizing this tour that you collect the $ prior to sailing. This way, if someone backs out, you’ll have time to get others you meet to join you). We were driven in a new (Mercedes?) van with our own driver. During the ride to Ephesus, Mesut gave us a ton of fascinating information about his country (Homer was born in Izmir) and about Ephesus. We took his all day tour so had the opportunity to do a lot—Mary, the mother of Jesus’ last home, Ephesus (all other ruins that I’ve seen in Italy and Greece pale to this magnificent place which is one of the birthplaces of our modern Christian Church—(Paul)), the Temple of Artemis (7 wonders of the ancient world), had a picnic barbeque at a typical Turkish restaurant (with a visit to a carpet factory/store), and ending with the Ephesus Museum. Mesut was not only loaded with charisma (and the cutest guide I’ve ever seen!!!) but also extremely knowledgeable. I highly recommend him and if anyone has any questions, you are welcome to email me at lpcaldwell at charter dot net.

[Lindypc]

Mesut's site ends with a dot org!

[NAS-KARR]

We used EKOL TRAVEL in both ISTANBUL & KUSADASI, we customized both of those tours and they followed our requests to a tee, I give em 5 stars.

 

CIAO,

[Bsan1221]

Has anyone taken any tours in this city that they especially liked. :) Such as a good driver, good tour guide able to seee most of the high lites. They pick you up from the port. I am trying to get all of our tours in order. :confused: Would rather take our own tours rather than ship tours if possible. We will be going on the Legend of the Seas on October 12,2007 for Rome. Can't wait. Part of the fun is the planning.Thank you for your help.

Delores

 

 

We just had a wonderful tour with Levent Solmaz. http://leventsolmaz.com/

 

He was great! He brought Ephesus to life and Ephesus turned out to be the highlight of our cruise. His prices were very reasonable in US funds and he paid for all the entrance fees. If you go anywhere in Turkey it must be with him. He loves his country and is very knowledgeable. He has a notebook full of pictures of what everything would have looked like. It was incredible. After our wonderful tour we did some shopping and then some of the people in our party wanted to purchase a turkish rug so we went to a distributor and had lunch there too.

[Northern Bear]

Other people have had luck with them but they were a no-show for us. Left 4 of us scrambling to throw together a tour at the dock.

 

My 2 cents...

[Jlrymedic]

Big thumbs up for Meander and Hakan. Very enjoyable day! I liked the fact that we had a driver and a guide, two seperate people, one drove and Hakan sat in the back facing us so we had real contact with him. He is very knowledgeable on many areas, not just Ephesus and the House of the Virgin Mary. He is very personable and will answer any question. Highly recommended, we had several cruise veterans on the tour and they said it was the best tour EVER, pretty high praise.

[Dutchwoman]

We will also be on Rotterdam and we are interested in this approach to seeing Ephesus - shore excursions for a family of four on a 39 day cruise are certainly adding up in cost. Could you please explain what you actually saw for this 30 Euros? Did the one price of 30 euro cover your whole group?

Thank you for your help.

Jennie

Hi Jennie!

Sorry for the late reply.. been very busy.

We paid the guide (his name is Nafiz) 30 Euros, that covered the cost for our group (we were 5). The tour took about 2 - 2,5 hours. He did an excellent job. But I am sure there are many other fine guides. Just don't forget to ask them for their license. And negotiate about the price before you start the tour in Ephesus. Our taxi driver was very helpful in finding us a guide at the entrance of Ephesus.

I hope this answer is helpful to you.

Regards, Dutchwoman