Esplora Travel

20/10/2026

"Can't beat the experience on all counts! Highly recommended." ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you, Patricia, for this lovely review of our Treasures of Sicily tour:

"There was no disappointment in the service. Five stars plus! Truly knowledgeable guide and driver, very well organized, great coverage of each of our points of interest and concern for each member's safety and comfort."

This is exactly what we aim for on every Esplora Travel tour: expert local guides, careful planning and small groups where everyone is looked after.

Read the review on Feefo 👉 https://www.feefo.com/en-GB/reviews/esplora/6acf0d6ee4b08c3b58402c08/customer-review-cant-beat-the-experience-on-all-counts-highly-recommended

Bookings for 2027 are now open 👉 https://www.esplora.co.uk/tour/treasures-of-sicily/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=post_20_oct

A fully escorted, small-group cultural tour through Sicily's Siracusa, Agrigento, Palermo, Cefalu and Taormina in 12 days. 100% five-star reviews in 2026.

20/10/2026

This is our lovely Treasures of Sicily group last week at the Belvedere in Modica, one of the UNESCO-listed towns of the Val di Noto, rebuilt after the great earthquake of 1693 and famous for its honey-coloured churches and its centuries-old chocolate.

If you'd like to be standing here next year, bookings for Treasures of Sicily 2027 are now open. Small group, expert guides and the very best of the island.

Find out more 👉 https://www.esplora.co.uk/tour/treasures-of-sicily/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=post_20_oct

13/10/2026

Down into the Vikos Gorge, one of the deepest canyons on earth relative to its width. We set off from Monodendri, dropped down the old kalderimi stone path and followed the dry riverbed north for most of the day, limestone walls rising almost a kilometre either side. Near the end, the Voidomatis springs burst out of the rock, ice-cold and impossibly clear. Then the final climb up to Vikos village, where a plate of pita and a cold b**r have never tasted better. Zagori is UNESCO-listed for its stone villages and bridges, but it’s the gorge that stays with you. Would you walk it?

11/10/2026

W**e tasting today at the Holy Monastery of Agios Nikolaos, Metsovo.

08/10/2026

Hanging between earth and sky, the monasteries of Meteora still feel like a vision. From the 14th century, monks fleeing Serbian and Ottoman turmoil in Thessaly climbed these sandstone pillars and built their retreats on the summits — reachable for centuries only by ladders and rope nets hauled by winch. Today we explored Great Meteoron, founded by St Athanasios, and Varlaam with its luminous post-Byzantine frescoes, before watching the late light turn the rocks gold above Kalambaka. Six monasteries still house living communities. Few places show so clearly how Byzantine faith shaped landscape, solitude and art. Unforgettable.

29/09/2026

Lunch in the courtyard of Gümrük Han, the 16th-century Ottoman caravanserai at the heart of Şanlıurfa’s old bazaar. Orhan walks us through the city’s signature dish, patlıcan kebabı: minced lamb and whole aubergine, skewered alternately, charred over coals, and wrapped in warm lavaş with isot pepper.

Silk and spice merchants once rested their caravans here. Today the courtyard is full of tea glasses, backgammon boards, and some of the best Urfa kebab you’ll find anywhere. Upper Mesopotamia has always been a crossroads, and Turkish cuisine here tastes of Arab, Kurdish, Armenian, and Ottoman kitchens all at once.

If you’re planning Southeast Turkey travel, make time for a long, slow lunch in Gümrük Han.



📍 Gümrük Han, Şanlıurfa

27/09/2026

25/09/2026

Mor Gabriel — 1,600 years of unbroken prayer 🕯️

Founded in 397 AD in the limestone hills of Tur Abdin, near Midyat in southeastern Turkey, Mor Gabriel (Deyrulumur) is the oldest surviving Syriac Orthodox monastery in the world, and it has never stopped being one. Monks here still chant the liturgy in Syriac, a form of Aramaic, the language of the early Church.

Look up in the sanctuary and you’ll find 6th-century Byzantine mosaics, gifts from Emperor Anastasius I, among the few to survive anywhere in the region. Outside, the great “Dome of Theodora” is linked by tradition to Justinian’s empress.

Empires came and went: Byzantine, Persian, Arab, Mongol, Ottoman. The monks of Mor Gabriel stayed, and the prayers never stopped.

📍 Mor Gabriel Monastery, Midyat, Mardin

Would you visit? Tell me below 👇

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25/09/2026

A thousand years before anyone thought to put it on a postcard, an Armenian king commissioned this jewel on a rock in Lake Van. The Church of the Holy Cross at Akdamar was built between 915 and 921 for King Gagik I Artsruni, and its architect, Manuel, wrapped the exterior in some of the most extraordinary relief carving of the medieval world.

Walk around it slowly. Jonah tumbles into the jaws of the whale. David squares up to Goliath. Adam and Eve stand beneath the tree. A running vine frieze teems with hunters, animals and harvesters. And there’s Gagik himself, holding a model of his church up to Christ.

The boat ride from Gevaş takes about twenty minutes, across a soda lake so blue it looks unreal. Come in spring and the island is white with almond blossom.

Few places hold stone, water and story together quite like this.

22/09/2026

Three thousand years of history on one rock. 🏰

Van Kalesi rises above the shores of Lake Van, once Tushpa, capital of the Urartian kingdom in the 9th century BC. The Urartians were rivals of Assyria, master builders and skilled metalworkers, and their citadel still carries cuneiform inscriptions carved into the living rock. High on the cliff, Xerxes of Persia left his own trilingual inscription in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. Below lie the ruins of Old Van, a city layered with Armenian, Seljuk and Ottoman history.

Few places in Turkey tell so many stories at once. Would you climb it?