I have been to Istanbul before. An ideal time is 3 days in Istanbul. But today I only would get to enjoy a long layover in Istanbul, for the duration of a day.
Arrival in Istanbul was at 6:45 am local time after gaining 2 hours on the flight from TBS to IST. I got my $20 visa to visit Turkey and then got thru passport control and collected my bag. I used public transport to get to the old town. It was straightforward to take the Metro/Subway and then transfer to the tram. I was happy it was early because I imagine the tram gets quite busy later in the day. And the good part was it cost $3 for two tokens for the ride as opposed to the 20 Euros or more for a taxi. I got nice views of Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque in the early morning.
Since I had spent over 4 days in Istanbul just 2.5 years ago, there wasn’t a lot that I hadn’t seen before, so I was limiting my visits to the markets and the Chora Church which was rated very high on TripAdvisor and that I hadn’t visited before.
I started out with going to the Grand Bazaar. This place is huge. There are a lot of nice things there but you must bargain hard and I had done all my Turkish shopping a couple years ago, so I didn’t buy anything.
I next walked up one of the main streets for over an hour to the Chora Church. I stopped at the old city wall on the way. Maybe I should have paid the extra $5 for the audio guide, but I didn’t get much out of the Chora Church – only spending about 15 minutes there. Yes, the mosaics are amazing and the best in Istanbul, but I didn’t feel it was worth the entry fee.
After the Church, I walked down to the Golden Horn – a large bay off of the Bosporus Straight. I was amazed by the number of jellyfish that are living there – such beautiful but terrible creatures.
At 1:20 I walked by a tour boat that looked ready to depart so I asked the captain if it was an open tour. For $20, I took a tour on the boat up the Bosporus Straight, past the amazing old and new architecture in this huge city of 20 million people. I drank a cup of apple tea as the sites went by.
Mid-cruise, we stopped in a little town for an optional buffet lunch. I skipped the lunch and bought a couple snacks and sat in the park overlooking the body of water. Sunset was a very early 4:30 as we cruised back to the old town. This was the end of my long layover in Istanbul so I headed back to the airport.
Looking for more things you might do on a long layover in Istanbul? Check out these.
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