Your guide meets you at the airport for a private transfer into the city. The first evening is yours — get your bearings, find somewhere to eat, and let the jet lag do what it's going to do.Fly to Bolivia. Arrive in La Paz. Meet your private driver. Transfer and settle in. Evening at leisure.

A full day in the historic heart of Istanbul. Topkapi Palace, where the Ottoman sultans lived and ruled for four centuries and where the imperial treasury still sits largely as they left it. The Hippodrome, once the social and political center of Byzantine Constantinople. The Blue Mosque, still an active place of worship and still one of the most arresting interiors in the world. The Grand Bazaar, which has been trading continuously since 1455 and currently houses around 4,000 shops across 61 covered streets. The evening is free — the neighborhood around Sultanahmet has no shortage of good options.

The morning takes you along Istiklal Street, Istanbul's main pedestrian boulevard, and up to the Galata Tower for views across the Golden Horn and the old city roofline. After lunch, you cross the Bosphorus to the Asian side and into Kuzguncuk, one of Istanbul's quietest and best-preserved neighborhoods — wooden houses painted in faded pastels, fig trees growing out of garden walls, a high street that still functions for the people who live there rather than the people visiting it. The day ends on the water with a private Bosphorus cruise as the light drops.

The morning goes to Fener and Balat, two of Istanbul's oldest residential districts on the southern shore of the Golden Horn. Greek Orthodox churches, Ottoman-era synagogues, and narrow lanes of colored houses that have been slowly drawing people back for the last decade. From there, Suleymaniye Mosque — arguably the finest work of the great Ottoman architect Sinan, and considerably less crowded than the Blue Mosque. Then the Underground Cistern, a sixth-century Byzantine waterworks built on 336 marble columns and half-flooded to this day. Hagia Sophia in the late afternoon, when the tour groups have thinned out. The Spice Market on the way to the airport. Evening flight to Cappadocia.

The alarm goes off before dawn for the balloon flight — an hour drifting over the fairy chimneys and carved valleys of the Göreme region as the sun comes up. It's the kind of thing that sounds like a cliché until you're actually up there. The rest of the day covers the Göreme Open Air Museum, a monastic complex carved into the rock face with churches dating to the 10th century, the Red Valley on foot, the mushroom-shaped rock formations at Paşabağı, and the ceramics workshops in Avanos, where potters have been working with the red clay of the Kızılırmak River for thousands of years.

Kaymakli Underground City goes eight levels deep into the volcanic rock and was built to shelter thousands of people from raids. How long people actually spent down there — and under what circumstances — is still debated. Above ground, Mustafapaşa is a former Greek village of grand stone mansions that were abandoned in the 1923 population exchange and have been slowly coming back to life. Pigeon Valley overlook at dusk for the view, then an evening Whirling Dervishes ceremony — a Sufi devotional ritual, not a tourist show, and worth understanding the difference before you go in.

Morning flights to Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city and one of its most liveable. The Roman Agora sits in the middle of the modern city center — a second-century marketplace still largely intact and almost entirely overlooked by visitors who fly straight to Ephesus. Time in the bazaar quarter for tastings before a coastal drive south to the Kuşadası area.

One of the best-preserved Roman cities in the Mediterranean and large enough that most people only see a fraction of it. The full circuit takes in the Odeon, the Temple of Hadrian, the Library of Celsus, the Grand Theatre — which seated 25,000 people and still hosts concerts — and the Terrace Houses, a separate ticketed section of wealthy private residences with intact mosaic floors and frescoed walls that give a genuinely different picture of how the city actually functioned. The visit to the House of the Virgin Mary, a small chapel on the hillside above Ephesus where tradition holds she spent her final years, closes the day. The evening is free.

A boat through the Dalyan channel, a reed-lined river delta on Turkey's southwestern coast, passing the Lycian rock-cut tombs carved into the cliff face above the water — royal tombs from the 4th century BC, still sharp against the stone. The channel opens out to Iztuzu Beach, one of the main nesting sites for loggerhead sea turtles on the Mediterranean. From there, the drive continues to Fethiye, a working harbor town that has managed to hold onto some of its actual character.

Kayaköy is a Greek village that was abandoned in 1923 following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Around 500 stone houses, two churches, and a school sit empty on the hillside above the valley, largely as they were left. It takes about an hour to walk and has an atmosphere that's hard to shake. For those who want it, paragliding from the ridge at Ölüdeniz gives you a bird's eye view of the Blue Lagoon below — one of the more well-known paragliding sites in the world and, from the air, easy to see why. Afternoon transfer to Bodrum.

The Castle of St. Peter was built by the Knights Hospitaller in the early 15th century using stones taken from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, which had stood on this same site. Inside is the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, which houses one of the most significant collections of Bronze Age and ancient shipwreck finds anywhere — including a wreck from 1300 BC discovered off the coast nearby. The afternoon and evening are free. Bodrum's waterfront and the streets behind it are worth the time.

A full day on a traditional Turkish gulet, working along the coastline to Tavşan Burnu, Haremten, and Aquarium Bay — named for the clarity of the water. Time to swim, snorkel, and sit in the sun. Lunch is onboard.

A free day to use however makes sense. Beach club time, a drive to one of the villages in the hills above Bodrum, or a slow morning along the café-lined marina. Your guide can point you in the right direction based on what you're after.

Morning transfer to Bodrum Airport for the connection to Istanbul and onward international flights.