Top Istanbul Walking Tours - page 36

Our guide was Egemen Tokatlioglu who was kind, patient, & extremely knowledgeable on all questions we asked. I wish we could have had him as our guide on ALL of our tours. If you can request him, you won’t be disappointed! He’s just great. BTW, we ended up having a private tour because other party was a no-show. It was fabulous!!!!

What a fabulous tour! After seeing the main tourist sites in the old town, it was great to see two smaller, more residential neighborhoods. Both were enjoyable to walk through, with many shops and restaurants that we would come back to wander through. It was a good mix of specific sites and walking the streets (one big hill). The pace was perfect, not rushed, with plenty of history contrasted with current conditions. A morning well-spent!

Great experience! Very easy to navigate and follow and book, the tour guides were very helpful and it was very easy to find everything especially the meetup points. They were very good at communicating and explained the history well. It was cold so they provided blankets and warm tea and lots of snacks. Everyone was very hospitable and inviting. Would definitely recommend this tour, the boat was also wonderful and the group size was perfect.

This was a very efficient way to see Topkapi Palace in 3 hours. Elif our guide was excellent. She provided historical background as well as fun, interesting facts. She had a lovely light hearted manner with a good sense of humor. It was a rainy cold day and her cheerful manner and enthusiasm made all the difference.

We only had one full day in Istanbul and wanted to make the most of our time to experience as much of the city as possible. Our driver picked us up at the hotel and arrived right on time as scheduled. We were dropped off close to the Hippodrome where our tour started with our guide, Fatih. Fatih was a GREAT guide!! He was very friendly, professional, knowledgeable, shared a ton of information, and provided plenty of time to answer all our questions. Our lunch stop was a beautiful little restaurant overlooking the water and a sampling of tasty Turkish dishes for lunch. Afterward we continued with our tour and headed for the Great Bazaar. We wandered several of the many streets in the bazaar with Fatih and took in all the sight, sounds and smells of this wonderful exhibit of culture. We saw many of the beautiful spots in the city that were on our list of "to see" including the Blue Mosque and the Haggai Sofia Mosque. There was an optional entrance fee for the Haggai Sophia Mosque of 25 euros per person which we thought was a small price to pay to see the inside and hear the stories and history of the mosque. After our walking tour, we were transported to the port for our sunset cruise on the Bosphorus Strait. The weather was cloudy, cool, and a bit breezy but there was plenty of areas on the boat to stay out of the cool air. You could also sit in the very front of the boat for an unobstructed view. There were also blankets available to wrap up in to keep warm if you needed them. We were served refreshments and snacks during our boat ride, which was a nice touch. The skies cleared just as we were returning to port and made for some gorgeous sunset pictures! What a perfect way to end the day in Istanbul. We were transported back to our hotel after the tour. It was a long day with a lot of walking but there were opportunities to stop and rest, if needed. What a great experience and would highly recommend this tour to someone that wants to experience Istanbul with limited time!!

Although some of dance number is too long to maintain excitement of viewer, show program was well organized with variety of different dance style. Best part of the program was live solo performance of percussion and combination of belly dance and percussion. The level of belly dancer was totally different from other tourist dance spot such as dinner cruise. I will visit agin just to see this part of the show.

It was a highly informative and educational tour for my wife and I. We learned detailed information about the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sofia, tour of a Government subsidized rug store close to the Bazaar and lunch thereafter at an authentic Turkish restaurant, where we were served with an appetizer, kebab and dessert. Following lunch, we toured the Spice Market, which had exotic tastes and fragrances. This was then followed by a cruise tour of the Bosphorus. The entire tour was conducted and led by the knowledgeable Mr. Ali. He is definitely "the Istanbul impressario"; everything about Istanbul and more... We truly enjoyed the itinerary and even more, Ali made the difference!!!!

We enjoyed this tasty food tour with Jeremy. We sampled about 10 different food and beverages in the 3 hours we were in the Kadikoy district of Istanbul. Jeremy is a resident of Kadikoy and it was nice to be able to try these foods and get commentary from a expert. These are foods that we normally would not have tried on our own. In fact, this was our favorite food tour of our Mediterranean trip and we would enjoy taking this tour again the next time we are in Istanbul.