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Up to date guidebook for Turkey

Is there an up-to-date Rick Steves guidebook for Turkey? All I could find on tha Amazon and Rick Steves’ websites was for Istanbul.. For Turkey , they show Lonely Planet, which never seems to be as readable as Rick Steves to me.

Posted by
6734 posts

I'm headed for Turkey in a few weeks. AFAIK there has never been a general "Rick Steves Turkey" book.

I have the current RS book on Istanbul and it's great, extremely comprehensive. Wish there was an RS whole country book, but from what I guess, there may not be a big market for that among American readers. From what I can tell (admittedly just a guess) it seems most Americans go to Istanbul, and only a relative few venture elsewhere (nearly all of them on cruise ships), and even among those who do venture off the boats, most stick to just a few places along the coast (Ephesus, Bodrum, etc.). Seems only a scant few independently traveling Americans get much beyond these places. The Rick Steves tours do hit a few spots on the Agean, and does a long bus loop through Ankara, Antalya, Capppadocia. Now, there are certainly large numbers of other foreign tourists (seems like there are vast numbers of Brits who spend large parts of their lives there) but Americans not so much.

I've picked up the Eyewitness Travel guide for Turkey (pretty good) and the Bradt Eastern Turkey guide (which seems to be the only solid source for info on the eastern part of the country).

I'm not a big fan of the LP books these days, as they tend to put you right in the epicenters of tourism crowded with the selfie-stick waving instagram set (which I increasingly seek to avoid). YMMV.

But...if HQ is reading...put me down as another vote for a "whole turkey" book.

Posted by
62 posts

I saw a 2016 RS guidebook for Turkey, but RS himself at the lectures advises that you need more current guidebooks than that. RS used to update annually, but I guess that’s too much work now. If HW is monitoring, is one in the hopper? We don’t leave until summer.

Posted by
6734 posts

I saw a 2016 RS guidebook for Turkey

No kidding? I stand corrected. I vaguely recall seeing much older RS books on (I think) "Greece and Turkey" which i assume only covered Istanbul plus the far western coast of Turkey, but my memory of the details is (obviously) fuzzy. Well, too late for me as I'm about to start packing, but interesting to know their might be a whole-country book coming (coming back?).

Posted by
7049 posts

Have you checked out your local library? Even a slightly out-of-date Lonely Planet book worked well for me. I also got some info on the ground in Istanbul.