Back-to-Back Tours

We did two tours but left a week in-between for independent travel and downtime. That worked well for us, and we had no worries about being sure to be in the new starting city on time.

Having said that, you should be able to make your tentative schedule work. The Athens tour will have no activities that Sunday, so you could leave as early as you want to catch your flight to Istanbul. Short flights like that usually have a several departures/day - I'd check that out right away to have a backup if your preferred flight gets cancelled.

The Istanbul tour starts at 1pm. You’d need to get an early flight that allows time to get from the airport to the city.

That being said, if it were me I would not want to do that. I’d want some independent time between tours. Could you give yourself at least a couple days between the tours? Perhaps you could start with Istanbul and finish with Greece?

I think an option might be to skip the last morning of the tour (which is really just breakfast anyway) and either take a later flight the night before or a REALLY early flight the last day of the tour. If I am doing back-to-back, I really try to have at least a day or two in between.

We did Greece on our own and then took a tour of Turkey, which tours are you doing?

I would consider taking time in between if you are doing 2 weeks or longer tours. You may get burned out by trying to cram too much into a short period of time.

We flew from Athens to Instanbul and it is a bit of a drive from the airport into the city, depending on traffic and time of day you arrive. I would suggest to hire a private driver from the airport to your hotel in Istanbul and keep in mind that the Athens airport is a bit out of town too.

But you know, if you have limited time, you do what feels best for you.

We've done several back-to-back tours over the years (once you've gone to the time and expense of crossing the Atlantic, you want to make it worthwhile!). But luckily ours have always lined up with at least a day in between. Looking at the itineraries of those two tours, it could be tricky to make it work, depending on airline schedules. The Athens tour does not get back to Athens from Nafplio until sometime during the afternoon of the 7th day, so even if you were ok skipping the final dinner, you may not be able to get to the airport when you need to. (The last day really is just breakfast so no loss there.)

If you're just doing the Istanbul tour (not Best of Turkey, which starts there), the itinerary says it starts at 3 pm, which helps (vs. 1 pm). But you really don't know how long getting through the airport and to your hotel will take. It wouldn't be the end of the world if you missed the intro and the orientation walk, but it would be a shame to miss the guided tour of the Blue Mosque. (Though you could go back for it on your free afternoon later in the tour.)

Another consideration: airline schedules change, so a plan that has very little wiggle room could be botched by that.

Personally, it would probably stress me out to try that, but you may be more chill than I am.

If you do the best of Turkey tour then as noted it does start at 1 p.m. It takes a minimum of an hour to get to the city center from the Istanbul airport in the middle of the day and you really do want to arrive in time for the tour meeting as you hit the ground running and have about a half day of tour that first day. The tour barely covers Istanbul so I always recommend at least two full days there extra - you could do this at the beginning or fly back there at the end of the tour.

If the second tour is just Istanbul, then you do have until 3 p.m. to get to the hotel but I would take the very earliest flight you can manage out of Athens.

In either case, be sure to communicate with the tour office to tell them your plans so that they in turn can notify the guide in case you have travel drama and don't make it in time. I personally would want more cushion than that schedule provides. I don't know which Greece tour you're looking at but the Best of Greece tour does have more than one choice of starting day of the week which could help build a breather.

I suppose you could do it if you had an early flight and the flight was on time. I like two to three days in between back to back tours. Is there another destination you could tour to make either Greece or Turkey work? Or, would other dates work better? We had to change our preferred dates to do the Best of Portugal followed by Barcelona Madrid tour.

I've never taken two back-to-back but have tacked on a long weekend before returning home from RS tours. I noticed on those weekends that I had little desire to go to a museum or listen to a guide or do much of anything but have a cup of coffee and walk around or maybe sit on a boat and watch the world go by. We're all different, but I wouldn't underestimate "hitting the wall" and needing to take a little break before launching into a second tour.

Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions. To put some perspective around this we are in the early stages of planning an April trip to Naples, Athens, Istanbul and Stuttgart. Our preferred sequence is as stated and we have specific dates that we need to be in Stuttgart for Fruhlingfest, their springtime beer festival. And of course, we are limited as to the dates of Rick's tours. We don't normally use a tour as I enjoy planning and coordinating our travel. However, for this trip we are thinking of doing two of Rick's tours back-to-back. Total time commitment is around four weeks. I would like light day or two after Athens and before Istanbul, but that isn't in the cards.

Given your feedback and the respective tour itineraries, it looks very doable for us to leave Athens early Sunday morning, skipping the final tour breakfast and making it to Istanbul in time for a 3:00 PM kick-off meeting. If we don't do Rick's tours we'll still do this trip on our own.

Last spring we did Best of Greece followed by the Turkey tour, along with 3 others from the Greece tour. We flew directly to Istanbul and the other 3 went to northern Greece.
Our flight from Athens was delayed but we had 2 full days on our own prior to the Turkey tour starting. The airport in Istanbul was a good 1 hour taxi ride to the tour hotel. (Because of the delay from Athens it ended up during the Friday night commute).
Istanbul is an incredible city and I’d recommend 2 days or more prior to the tour starting. We did a food tour one day. And visited the Underground Cistern and the area around the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia. It was a gorgeous day and the area around these 2 sites is park like and filled with families.

Just to further confirm, nothing happens on the final day of a RS tour. There is no set time for a group breakfast but you are entitled to breakfast. If you see your tour mates it’s really a coincidence since people will be leaving at all kinds of times to make flights, travel onward or stay extra days. Your good byes are made the night before at your farewell dinner.

We are doing back-to-back tours every year now. We always leave a few days in between tours to allow time for us to find a good laundry and wash all of our clothes ourselves. They always turn out better that way. It also allows us time for activities that might have been missed in the tours.