Sultanahmet takes a morning. The Bosphorus takes the rest.
Which cruise actually stops on the Asian shore. What a Hagia Sophia ticket really costs. Whether Cappadocia is worth two days out of five. Reviews of every tour you can book in Istanbul.
A boat, a basilica, a palace and a ceremony.
Four bookings carry a first trip to Istanbul. What each one costs, and what travellers say once they have done it.
01The first afternoonDaytime or Sunset Sightseeing Cruise & Audio GuideNinety minutes up the strait and back, past the palaces and the wooden yalı houses on both banks. Do it early and the rest of the map makes sense.
02The one everyone comes forHagia Sophia Skip-the-Line Ticket & Museum OptionSkip-the-line entry to Hagia Sophia. Go at opening or after four; the middle of the day belongs to the cruise groups.
03The sultans’ half dayTopkapi Palace & Harem Museum Ticket & Audio GuideTopkapı with the Harem added. The Harem is a separate timed ticket, and the palace shuts one day a week.
04The eveningHodjapasha Whirling Dervishes Show & ExhibitionThe Mevlevi sema at Hodjapasha, staged in a converted Ottoman bathhouse. An hour long, and a ceremony rather than a floor show.
Four ways up the Bosphorus, and what each one is for.
The strait is the reason to be here. A daytime run costs less than lunch; a table on a dinner boat costs about what dinner ashore would. Which deck you want comes down to the hour you sail.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · Daytime or Sunset Sightseeing Cruise & Audio Guide
The daytime runUp to the fortress and back, audio guide in your ear.
The sunset sailingOut at golden hour, back with the bridges lit.
Dinner on the waterA set menu, a Turkish night show, the table for the evening.
A smaller boatTwenty people instead of two hundred, and a stop on the Asian shore.
All 326 boat days in Istanbul →
The old city, monument by monument.
Four of these stand within ten minutes of one another, which is why every queue collapses into the next one by eleven. The tower and the spice halls are the walk across the Golden Horn. Where to start, and the best way into each.
The days that start at six in the morning and earn it.
A lake two hours east, an island chain with no cars on it, a battlefield on the Dardanelles, and the rock valleys of Cappadocia at the end of a short flight. None of it is Istanbul, all of it leaves from Istanbul.
The tours Istanbul is actually famous for.
Every Istanbul review →A dinner boat, a cistern, a mosaic of Christ and a room full of turning dervishes. These carry more travellers than anything else in the city.
1
Bosphorus Dinner Cruise & Show with Private Table
Spend three hours aboard a Mega Lüfer yacht, crossing between Istanbul’s European and Asian shores while enjoying a three-course meal, Turkish music, folk dance, flamenco, and a DJ. Choose standard or VIP dining, with optional hotel transfers and drinks.
From · $34
Read our review →
2
Daytime or Sunset Sightseeing Cruise & Audio Guide
from $8
3
Bosphorus Dinner Cruise with Turkish Night Show
from $34
4
Basilica Cistern Fast-Track Entry and Audio Guide
from $44
5
Hagia Sophia Skip-the-Line Ticket & Museum Option
from $33
6
Hodjapasha Whirling Dervishes Show & Exhibition
from $32
7
Topkapi Palace & Harem Museum Ticket & Audio Guide
from $61
8
Sunset or Day Small-Group Yacht Cruise with Snacks
from $31
Balat, Kadıköy, and the ferry that gets you to both.
Sultanahmet is one square kilometre of empire and everyone is standing in it. The rest of the city is a ferry ride away: painted timber houses above the Golden Horn, a market district on the Asian shore, an island chain where private cars are banned outright.
Every Istanbul walking tour →
What a day in Istanbul costs, from a ferry ticket up.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it charges. The city is cheap at the bottom and not remotely cheap at the top, and the gap is mostly boats and flights.
Cruises up the strait, mosque and cistern tickets, a coffee-reading workshop, the walk round Balat.
Guided full days through the old city, the Harem ticket, a hammam with the full scrub, dinner on the water.
Private guides with a car, the Dardanelles and Troy, and the two-day runs to Cappadocia with the flight included.
Three things Istanbul does that nowhere else does the same way.
Domes and covered markets run the length of the old Ottoman world. A sema in a fifteenth-century bathhouse, a marble slab under a pierced dome, and a cup read back to you at the bottom do not.
The Whirling Dervishes
The sema is a prayer rather than a performance. The dervish turns with one palm up to receive and one turned down to pass on, and the music runs through four salutes before it stops. Istanbul stages it several evenings a week for visitors, most reliably at Hodjapasha near Sirkeci, in a hall that spent its first centuries as a bathhouse. An hour, no interval, and the room stays deliberately quiet.
- 1Hodjapasha Whirling Dervishes Show & Exhibition★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 4,790 reviews
- 2Whirling Dervishes Ceremony and Mevlevi Sema★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 1,694 reviews
- 3Whirling Dervish Ceremony next to Hagia Sophia★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 906 reviews
The Hammam
You lie on the göbek taşı, the heated marble slab in the middle of the room, until the heat has done the work. Then you are scrubbed with a coarse mitt and rinsed with copper bowls of water from a basin along the wall. The historic baths in the old city charge properly for the full treatment and are worth doing once; the neighbourhood ones do the same thing for a third of the price.
- 1Private Turkish Bath, Massage, and Spa in Old City★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 3,225 reviews
- 2Private Turkish Bath, Sauna, and Massage★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 1,306 reviews
- 3Istanbul Gedikpasa Historical Turkish Bath with Privacy Option★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,285 reviews
Coffee, and the cup read afterwards
Turkish coffee is brewed in a long-handled cezve buried in hot sand, which heats it from every side and gives the foam its body. You drink it, turn the cup upside down on the saucer, wait for it to cool, and someone reads the shapes the grounds have left on the way down. The workshops teach both halves of that, and you keep the cezve.
- 1Turkish Coffee Making and Fortune Telling Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,308 reviews
- 2Turkish Coffee Making and Fortune Telling Workshop★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 451 reviews
- 3Turkish Coffee on Sand Workshop: Fortune Telling & Gift Set★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 309 reviews
Four Istanbul bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most of this city can be sorted over breakfast. These four run on closing days, dated flight seats and a small hall with fixed evenings, none of which take any interest in when your plane gets in.
- 01Topkapi Palace & Harem Museum Ticket & Audio GuideThe palace shuts one day a week and the Harem is a separate timed ticket on top of the entry. Turn up on the wrong morning and you are looking at the gate.
- 022-Day All-Inclusive Cappadocia Guided TripIt is a flight each way and a night in a cave hotel. The seats are dated, so the trip gets booked before the trip does.
- 03Hodjapasha Whirling Dervishes Show & ExhibitionThe sema runs on set evenings in a converted bathhouse with a fixed number of seats in the room. There is no second sitting.
- 04Istanbul to Gallipoli Full Day Tour with Lunch and TransfersOne coach, one early departure, and hours of the Marmara coast each way. Miss it and there is nothing else running that day.
The days the ferries stay tied up, and what to do instead.
A southwesterly through the Marmara cancels sailings at a few hours’ notice, and it does it all winter and often in spring. Istanbul has an answer ready: half of the best rooms in this city are underground, under a dome, or under steam.
By the part of the city you are in
By the kind of Istanbul day
The monuments, then the water, then the side of the city nobody photographs.
TopkapıThe Istanbul reviews we added last.
Keep going →
Two (2) Days Istanbul Old City and Two Continents Walking Tour
Read our review →
2 Days Cappadocia Tour from Istanbul with Optional Balloon
Read our review →
Exclusive Bosphorus Cruise – Luxury Yacht Experience in Istanbul
Read our review →
Istanbul Private Wine Tasting Tour Through 3 City Wineries
Read our review →
Istanbul Layover Tour: Private & Personalized with Transfers
Read our review →
