Turkey: Tour guide, Frommer’s

Having now read a whole bunch of tour guides, I am beginning to look at them collectively in a different light. For me, their main purpose is to provide background, detail and then guidance as I plan my trip. And they do that, but they are also like the menu at a restaurant. They list all the possibilities and then you choose what you will have. But have you ever thought about the menu in reverse? Mostly it is a list of things you could have, but won’t. Guide books are beginning to depress me. They are lists of places I could visit, but won't.

For Turkey, I used Frommer’s, probably the most mainstream of all the many possibilities. Of the countries I have visited so far Turkey is the one about which I knew the least, going in. Some guidebooks target a niche.  Being quirky is their sales point. That works if the guide is adding to what you already know about a place. For me, knowing so little, I needed thorough and comprehensive. Frommer’s delivers.

The guide book describes six different regions, any of which would merit extended exploration. Given the nature of my project. It was kind of like Frommer was teasing me. Ankara, the capital, was a given and for the second city, Istanbul was the obvious choice. So that's it? No, that was impossible. We’d be missing so much. Turkey is such a large, diverse and beautiful country, two cities would not be enough. But then the question is: of the other four, which three do you leave out? We settled on Izmir and the opportunity to see the Aegean Coast and Ephesus, the ancient Greek ruins. I think it was a good choice but I can't help wondering about Bursa and Cappadocia and all the other things we missed.