Guided Tours to Ephesus Tuekey

We are taking the NCL cruise from Venice for 14 days and returning to Venice.

We are looking for a tour guide to take us from Izmir to Ephesus for a 6 hour tour.

We do not want to use NCL tours.

Does anyone have a tour guide that they would recommend for Ephesus ?

Many thanks for your help.

This company is very good at arranging guides and they are very responsive via e-mail. THey have multiple tours and different price points.

Email: Nur at Ekol Travel Turkey <nur@ekoltravel.com>

You will have a great time

This company is very good at arranging guides and they are very responsive via e-mail. THey have multiple tours and different price points.

 

Email: Nur at Ekol Travel Turkey <nur@ekoltravel.com>

You will have a great time

I agree. Nur did a wonderful job of arranging a customized tour for us and booked us a great guide.

Check out our trip report and pictures at http://www.bully4.us/blacksea2.html

Have a GREAT cruise!

When you are taking your cruise on the GEM? Would love to meet a few people to organize a private tour. Will be in Ephesus on Sept 22 on the Gem.

EKOL, get the guide Ali, he rocks!

We are taking the NCL cruise from Venice for 14 days and returning to Venice.

 

We are looking for a tour guide to take us from Izmir to Ephesus for a 6 hour tour.

 

We do not want to use NCL tours.

 

Does anyone have a tour guide that they would recommend for Ephesus ?

 

Many thanks for your help.

When you are taking your cruise on the GEM? Would love to meet a few people to organize a private tour. Will be in Ephesus on Sept 22 on the Gem.

Bee Bop, look for the Roll Call for your cruise. You should be able to meet cruisemates there.

I had a great experience emailing with Nur but just be aware of the bus they assign to you. In Ephesus our driver didn't want to use the AC and it was just horrible. We booked Ekol for a two days private tour in Istanbul and one day in Ephesus. Our tour guide in Istanbul was probably the worst tour guide we ever had on a private tour, but the AC on the bus worked fine. In Ephesus we had a wonderful tour guide but the driver didn't want to turn the AC on. We paid in the beginning of the tour and didn't have any way to make them fix the problem, just wanted everyone to be aware of this problem. By the way, our tour guide called Ekol and I don't know who I talked to but on our way back from the Virgin Mary House the AC was working fine.

We also used Ekol, and our guide (Nahide) was wonderful...one of the best we have ever toured with.

Another vote for Ekol ... we used them last year and were happy with their service.

We used Ekol in August 2007 and were very happy. Booked just for the 2 of us and (at our request) we went to the Temple of Artemis and Ephesus only. Guide and driver book excellent.

Photos in the link below.

Kathy:)

We just came back from Ephesus and Istanbul and agree with what has been said on this board about Nur at Ekol Travel, who did an amazing job for us under real pressure. We had originally booked Levent Solmaz in mid-January for our June 10 cruise for private tours of both Ephesus and Istanbul. A week before we were scheduled to leave, he sent us an email that completely changed the terms of our agreement. It was so unacceptable that we no longer wanted to use him. We contacted Nur, and she took care of everything. We had excellent guides in Ephesus and Istanbul (3 days in Istanbul). The drivers in Istanbul were excellent as well. An unexpected bonus was that we saved better than $300 over what Levent Solmaz was going to charge us.

one more vote for Ekol - had a great day out on jeep trip to Ephesus and Sirince - best tour of our cruise. We wanted no shopping at all and this request was adhered to without question.

Let me chime in too and say how pleased we were with Ekol. We were on the NCL Jade this winter, and used Ekol for a private tour (4 people) from Izmir to Ephesus, including the Virgin Mary House, the Terrace Houses in Ephesus, and the Temple of Artemis.

Nur was incredibly responsive by email in terms of answering questions and then getting us set up, and our guide (Yelda) was absolutely fantastic. Our day with her was the single most enjoyable day of our entire trip.

Have a great time!

Our group of 8 just returned from the Norwegian Gem. We booked Emre Ates for our private tour in Ephesus and I can tell you, without hesitation, he was the highlight of all of our shore excursions. Not only is this personable, English speaking young man a history expert, but he is warm, funny and just a delight to be around. He reminds me of Johnny Depp from Pirates of the Caribbean.

He has a nice old man named "Mommy" that is the driver in a comfortable, clean and air conditioned 14 seat van. Emre takes you back in time as you explore Ephesus, bringing history to life. He picked a very nice, but inexpensive, restaurant for lunch. We are very picky about our private drivers and he is one of the best. His email address is: arkamasa@hotmail.com

If you have any questions, you can email me at sportsmedatlanta@aol.com Doc

We too had Emre for our guide, but went thru Ekol. Were told the guides do not necessarily work for one company exclusively.....

he was great btw

We just got back from a cruise with Royal Caribbean and found that http://ephesusshuttle.com/ (was reccomended by someone else on this board prior to our departure.

Excellent service by Fevzi Turhan, and the price was right!

They offer full tours or just a shuttle service. Your choice. We had a full 11 person air conditioned van for just my family of 3 on a Sunday morning.

We just came back from Ephesus and Istanbul and agree with what has been said on this board about Nur at Ekol Travel, who did an amazing job for us under real pressure. We had originally booked Levent Solmaz in mid-January for our June 10 cruise for private tours of both Ephesus and Istanbul. A week before we were scheduled to leave, he sent us an email that completely changed the terms of our agreement. It was so unacceptable that we no longer wanted to use him. We contacted Nur, and she took care of everything. We had excellent guides in Ephesus and Istanbul (3 days in Istanbul). The drivers in Istanbul were excellent as well. An unexpected bonus was that we saved better than $300 over what Levent Solmaz was going to charge us.

We ended up with Ekol for similar reasons, although in our case Levent Solmaz had to cancel last minute due to an illness in the family. Ekol was able to put together a wonderful private tour on very short notice :)

Just back from our 7 day Venice cruise. I posted this in Italy thread too,I got lots of information from this site before we went.

My summary- although more expensive, the private guides are worth it.

We had Daniella from RomeInLimo for a 3-4 hour Vatican/St.Peter's tour. That we could take an 11 and 12 year old for three hours in a hot, crowded art museum and not hear one complaint is a miracle! Do look for the elevator to the dome in st.peter's. In Turkey we had Vulcan through Ephesus Deluxe, also excellant. Again we went for hours w/ no "i'm bored".

On the other hand, at the Colosseum we joined an on-site group where woman had small microphone, too large a group, often stood w/ her back to us, we could barely hear her. (quote from my 11 yr old's journal "mom and dad tried to listen but I just pretended to and took pictures because I couldn't understand her). At Dubrovnik we rented mp3 players w/ audio tour, again the volume was insufficient, every time you tried to pause it froze up. one of them kept skipping. In both cases, the person soliciting the tour had virtually no accent but the person giving the tour had a strong accent.

Turkey was a long day but we had a nice tour starting w/ Ephesus, terrace houses, temple of artemis (not much left there), a nice lunch at rug co-op where they demonstrated making rugs- my dtr's favorite part of the trip (until she won at bingo!), we spent too long there and at leather store but that was due to our own indecision, not that they pushed at all, we could have left quickly but chose to spend too much $ instead. This left very little time for the village of Sirince, which looked quaint and fascinating but we only had time to walk one block (loads of little shops, beautiful pashmina scarves, lots of inexpensive jewelry). He told us things would be cheaper there than at the port bazaar but we didn't really have time to compare.

This seems to be an ekol love-in, but other companies such as HelloEphesus and EphesusDeluxe have good reviews to if you search on this board. We used HelloEphesus and could not have been more pleased, from the initial email to the end of our wonderful day.

Im surprised no one mentioned Kagan from privatetoursinturkey.com. Kagan is a licensed GUIDE and does not just drive you around and dump you off at the sites. Kagan is absolutely one of the best tours we have ever taken. Very informative and friendly. He also has done work at Ephesus and knows the site like his own home.

I would recommend him 100%. He also took us to a family run restaurant where we all agreed it was one of the best lunches we have ever had. We had about 17 in our CC group and everyone loved him.

We ended up with Ekol for similar reasons, although in our case Levent Solmaz had to cancel last minute due to an illness in the family. Ekol was able to put together a wonderful private tour on very short notice :)

When did Levent Solmaz cancel on you?

We ended up with Ekol for similar reasons, although in our case Levent Solmaz had to cancel last minute due to an illness in the family. Ekol was able to put together a wonderful private tour on very short notice :)

When did Levent Solmaz cancel on you?

When did Levent Solmaz cancel on you?

When I emailed him about three days before our scheduled tour to confirm the details. We had initially arranged the tour about five months earlier.

I e-mailed Levent a few months ago and never heard back from him, but this is what an associate of Levent's (one who has received rave reviews on CC and TripAdvisor) wrote in an e-mail to me:

"Levent prefers to do long land tours now it seems he is not much interested in shore excursions."

I e-mailed Levent a few months ago and never heard back from him, but this is what an associate of Levent's (one who has received rave reviews on CC and TripAdvisor) wrote in an e-mail to me:

 

"Levent prefers to do long land tours now it seems he is not much interested in shore excursions."

A few years ago we booked with Levent and had personal confirmation from him, but when we arrived at the port he had sent a substitute guide. She was wonderful and we loved touring with her, but we really felt that Levent was not up front with us.

Check out our trip report and pictures at http://www.bully4.us/holyland.html

On our last trip we had a much better relationship with Nur from Ekol tours and everything was exactly as we discussed.