Istanbul Trails ~ Your Istanbul Tourist & Expat Travel Guide
Your personal Istanbul city trip & expat guide
From the category archives:
The Pierre Loti Café, named after the French novelist, naval officer and Turkophile, is famous for its spectacular views over the Golden Horn. Located in Eyüp, about 6 kilometers from the Galata Bridge in Eminönü, it is not exactly on the typical tourist path. So, if you’re in Istanbul for only a few days, you [...]
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Almost on a daily basis I get emails from people about to take a cruise liner to Istanbul. Trying to plan their trip, they have questions like “Where is the cruise port in Istanbul?”, “How far is it from the cruise ship pier in Istanbul to Sultanahmet?” or “What are the transportation options from the [...]
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Istanbul is surrounded and divided by water. Because of this you’ll see a bustling activity of floating devices on the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara and in the Golden Horn. A whole array of water-borne craft, ranging from privately owned (fishing) boats, over regular ferries (vapur) to a fleet of high-speed catamaran sea buses (deniz [...]
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With most Istanbul sightseeing spots only open from 09:00 till 17:00, you of course want to make most of the day and not waste any time by having a timely lunch. Luckily, eating on the street is very much a part of local life. You can’t walk from corner to corner on a street, cross [...]
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Istanbul has plenty of excellent public transportation options, but the inner-city buses are in my opinion not one of them. For starters, it is not the quickest means of transportation. Unlike Istanbul’s tram and metro system, they don’t have their own lanes and therefore suffer from the chronic Istanbul traffic jams. Secondly, it is not [...]
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The most efficient and cheap way to get from a to b in Istanbul by public transportation is undoubtedly by metro, tram, funicular and/or ferry. These means of public transportation are very efficient, quick and punctual. Not in the least because they don’t suffer from Istanbul’s constantly clogged streets. In this article I focus [...]
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The akbil electronic travel pass is definitely the best feature of the constantly improving Istanbul public transportation network. Akbil is short for ‘akıllı bilet‘, which means intelligent ticket. And that’s exactly what it is. It’s a basically a small stainless steel button in a plastic holder, together not bigger in size than any key on [...]
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The brand new Istanbul Card (İstanbul Kart) was proudly introduced in the spring of 2009 by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality as a card with which you will be able to pay for all your Istanbul transportation, cultural and entertainment activities. In a first phase, the İstanbul Kart will replace the currently used akbil as a [...]
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A Scenic Cruise on the Bosphorus has to be on your Istanbul to-do list while you’re visiting this marvellous Turkish metropolitan. To give you an idea of what you can expect, I created the video below.
There are two versions available: a YouTube version (smaller in size) and a WVM version (bigger in size). The length [...]
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After leaving the Yeniköy dock we enter the final leg of the Scenic Bosphorus Cruise. There were plenty of sightseeing spots to look for during the cruise on the lower Bosphorus and the middle Bosphorus, and in that respect the upper Bosphorus may seem a little disappointing. But don’t be fooled by the shorter highlights [...]
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