DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Istanbul
DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Istanbul will lead you straight to the best attractions Istanbul has to offer. Packed with detailed maps, beautiful cutaways, and floor plans of all of Istanbul’s major sights, this guide explores every facet that makes Istanbul dynamic, from the unique mix of Muslim and Christian history to the sprawling architecture of the Topkapi Palace to the lively Istanbul nightlife and festival culture. This fully updated and expanded guide provides comprehensive guidance on th
List Price: $ 25.00
Price:
Diego Banducci
Best General Purpose Travel Guide to Istanbul,
Customer Video Review Length:: 0:19 Mins
.
If you’re only going to buy one guide to Istanbul, this is the one.
The principal reason is that Istanbul is a city of great architecture, which D-K’s cut-away diagrams ideally showcase. You can quickly determine where you are within a building and which features you have not yet seen.
For us, the most enjoyable attraction in Istanbul was the ferry ride up the Bosphorus, which ends at a charming village near the Black Sea with excellent restaurants where you have lunch before returning. There are commercial tourist boats that make this trip, but we much preferred the public ferry that cost approx. $10 round-trip — one of the great travel bargains of the world. The discussion about it in this guide is quite good.
Some things not covered in the book:
* When we asked the concierge at our hotel for the best place to change money, he said “The Grand Bazaar, no question.” Indeed. In addition to a narrow spread between buy and sell, there is no commission (other commercial money-lenders not only charge a large spread, but usually tack on a 4% commission). The local merchants all use the money-changers there, and according to the concierge, exchange rates for the entire country are set there. Alternatively, you can use ATMs, which appear to be ubiquitous.
* Among the best bargains in the Grand Bazaar are gold and silver, which are sold by weight with a reasonable mark-up, as opposed to the 400% markups commonly charged by American jewelers. Each jeweler has a gram scale where he weighs any given piece, and then prices it accordingly, based upon the price of gold that morning. The gold, by the way, appears to universally be 22 karat, worked in India. Because Indian workers are paid $15 per month, labor is not a material element in the price. A jeweler I spoke with priced a bracelet (pre-bargaining) at $650, when the price of the gold alone was $525. He was highly competent and straightforward in answering my questions, as were most of the merchants I dealt with. Similar savings seem to be available on diamond jewelry, although I did not consider myself competent to judge the quality of the stones and thus, did not buy anything.
* Rug merchants appear to be somewhat less reputable and certainly more insistent (one becomes tired of hearing their ubiquitous “hallo”). If they ask which hotel you’re staying in or when you’re leaving, simply respond “Why do you want to know?” One rug merchant, who is married to an American woman and is himself quite americanized told me that many of the merchants import rugs from China and then represent them as being from Turkey or Iran. As with diamonds, it pays to know what you’re buying.
* Cab drivers are often dishonest. Know how much you should pay for a given trip and carry a lot of small bills and coins, so that you can pay exactly. Do not expect change. You may receive old lira (the Turkish lira was steeply devalued several years ago). Make sure the driver starts the meter when you get into the cab. The rate after midnight is 50% greater than before. The meters state fares in Turkish lira, but drivers may try to charge you in dollars or Euros; state clearly that you will pay them in lira when you get into the cab and demand that they turn on the meter. Still, the (honest) rates are quite reasonable, especially since tips are not expected.
* The food is excellent, good ingredients and wonderful spices. Explore or ask your concierge. The best place we found, on the advice of our concierge, was the Magnaura Cafe Restaurant at Akbiyik No. 27 in Sultanhamet, tel: (0212)518 76 22, three blocks from the Haja Sofia. UPDATE 3/09: Better yet, just across the street the Albura Kathisma Cafe, Yeni Akbiyik Cad. No. 26 Sultanhamet. This street is full of good, reasonably priced, restaurants.
* Be prepared to awaken at 6:00 am with the Call to Prayer, which is blasted from loudspeakers on the minarets of the mosques. It doesn’t last long, but it will awaken you. I was not able to sleep through it, a problem that I rarely encounter. A video of the Call to Prayer, taken from the park between Aya Sofia and the Blue Mosque, is included in this review (Be sure to turn up the sound).
* Three must-sees that we regret having missed: (1) the Chora Church, (2) the Palace Cistern, and (3) the old city walls.
UPDATE [3/09] On a second trip we visited all three; well worth the effort. Additional recommendations: (1) the Spice Market (2) Sokollu Mehmet Pasha Mosque, a lovely smaller mosque near the Blue Mosque with beautiful tiles, and (3) the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus (aka the Little Hagia Sofiya), now a mosque and one of the most calming places of worship I’ve ever been in.
All things considered, it’s a great city.
For a really useful pocket-sized guide:…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|Joseph L. Hennes "Joe Tenor"
Excellent!,
I am well traveled and have used a lot of travel guides. This one really rocked. I met several other people for this trip to Istanbul and then we saw the sights together, each of us brought a different guide book, the DK Eyewitness was the best one. More and better maps, more definitive information. Every time I had a question the answer was there. I will specifically look for DK in the future.
Was this review helpful to you?
|R. Patel
One Eyewitness Guide That’s Useful for More than Armchair Travel,
This guide will serve you pretty well for a short trip to Istanbul. I love the color and glossiness of DK Eyewitness guides, but they are often prettier than practical. However, for a city that has a strong tourism infrastructure and a lot of historic sites, per say, their guides serve you well (Paris being another example of a useful Eyewitness Guide). The detailed and descriptive cut-aways of Hagia Sophia, Dolmabahce, the Archeology Museum, Topkapki, The Blue Mosque, etc…were a great companion guide to understand the historical significance of these sites. There is also a nice overview of the different bazaars and a section on Bosphorus cruising (including pictorial maps which helped me to identify different points on the riverside). If you are to spend more time in Istanbul and go beyond the major sites, you might want to go with one of the thicker, less glossier guides. As with all DK Eyewitness guides, the “Practicals” section is brief, but with Istanbul I didn’t feel like there was a lot of special planning to do. Their restaurant sections don’t tend to be particularly useful (Brief statements where everything ends up sounding the same), so if you end up picking this guide, I would do some restaurant research online apart from it. Otherwise, it holds up as a solid short trip guide, and the glossy map of the city (incl. public transport) is sort of the icing on the cake.
Was this review helpful to you?
|