Why Istanbul:
I booked a trip with my wife to Turkmenistan to celebrate our first anniversary. The tour started on Monday. If I maximized time off and left Friday after work, had an extra day somewhere. Coming from the United States, the only realistic way to reach Turkmenistan is to fly Turkish Airlines and it just so happens that Turkish offers free stopover program. So, Istanbul it would be. I had been to Istanbul once before – also as a stopover en-route to Central Asia – back in 2012 (before the creation of this blog). It was in Istanbul where I stayed in a hostel for the very first time, so the city has a special place in my heart.
The stopover program includes a free hotel. Most of the hotel options are in the outskirts of the city but there was one option in the Sultanahmet neighborhood, the historic area home to most of the city’s famous sights.
May 17, 2025: Sheesh!
Our flight from Los Angeles arrived at 18:30 on Saturday. Getting out of the airport took over an hour which included long walks and a long wait for baggage. The immigration line was surprisingly short.
Istanbul recently connected their metro system to the airport last year. The station is about 10 minutes from the terminal building and then another 8-minute trip to go down the five stories to reach the train. Trains run every 20 minutes, and we unfortunately just missed it.
After a 20-minute wait, we boarded the subway. The ride into Istanbul took 30 minutes. It’s hard to judge speeds underground, but Line 11 is one of the fastest subway on earth with speeds of 120km/hour (75mph). While planned to extend further into the city, it currently drops you off at a station called Gayrettepe. Unfortunately, the M11 platform at Gayrettepe is the deepest platform in the system (and one of the 10 or 15 deepest train stations in the world) which meant that it took 10 minutes to get back to street level and another 5 minutes to transfer to another line.
We then transferred to a second subway line which we rode for 20 minutes. At this point, we could have gotten onto a tram for 2 stops to reach our hotel, but we gave up and got a taxi (Uber in Istanbul calls normal taxis. You can pay via the app at the metered fare plus a 50 cent booking fee). Three hours after landing, we finally made it to Sultanahmet. Sheesh!
After checking in to our hotel, we got dinner with my friend JB who was traveling around Türkiye with his mom. They graciously met us at a restaurant across the street from our hotel.
May 18, 2025: A Whirling Tour
We started our day walking to Sultanahmet Square: the center of historic Istanbul. Now a large open area, it was originally the Hippodrome of ancient Byzantium. Surrounding Sultanahmet Square are many of Istanbul’s famous attractions including Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque. Nearby is the Tokkapi Palace. I visited all these places back in 2012.
Unfortunately, Türkiye is undergoing a major economic downturn since 2018. Inflation has been hovering between 50-80% per year. As a result, the exchange rate between global currencies such as the US Dollar and the Turkish lira. Türkiye is generally cheap now, however, the government now charges insane prices for tourist attractions. The bigger palaces are the lira equivalent of €50/person while smaller attractions such as the Galata Tower are around €30. The 200-300% price increases only happened in the last 2 years, before then, everything was priced reasonably. It feels like a cash grab and honestly has turned me off from traveling to Türkiye in the near future.
Luckily the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmed Mosque) was free! It also opened 30 minutes before everything else so we started our day there.
Built in the early 1600’s to outdo Hagia Sofia which has dominated the city’s skyline for over 1,000 years, the Blue Mosque is probably the most impressive Ottoman mosque on earth.
Next, we visited the Basilica Cistern, a water storage tank built in the 6th century by the Byzantines. The enormous chamber is supported by hundreds of columns and was reportedly built by 7,000 slaves.
It was very impressive but considering we only spent 15 minutes in there, the €30 price tag felt like a rip off. If you a Turkish citizen, the price is 200 lira (€5). I respect having a discount for locals but the delta is just too much.
Maisie didn’t want to pay to go into another museum, so instead we tried to visit a hammam. We first attempted to visit a fancy hammam where treatments are €90/person, but they do not do walk-in bookings. Luckily, I was able to find a Lonely Planet article about a more local hammam right next to our hotel. They only do walk-ins. One sign said the hammam was open since 1505 but another said the mid-1700’s. Regardless, its old!
We walked into a room full of old Turkish men chatting. At this moment, I knew we reached the “real deal”. Nobody spoke English, but one guy gave me a menu which showed that the “works” treatment which included sauna, massage, and scrub was 1150 lira or less than $30.
After payment, Maisie was then taken to a women’s section for her treatment and I was given the keys to a private room to change into a towel. Then, an old balding Turkish man with cataracts and a limp led me to spa area all covered in marble. It looked just like the historic hammams I saw as archaeological sites in Spain but this was real!
I sauna-ed for 10 minutes before being led to a marble sink. I sat down next to the sink. The man proceeded to douse me with buckets of warm water. He also scrubbed my arms with a mitt. Then I was taken over to a large marble slab where I laid face down and was bent in all sorts of directions. Occasionally, he would stumble over to another sink and douse himself with cold water. Since he spoke no English and I no Turkish, he was forceful in pushing, dare I say manhandling, me around.
After the treatment, given option to go back to sauna and hang out on my own. I instead went back to central area where I got a soda, took a nap and then headed out.
It was now lunchtime so Maisie and I got kebabs at a spot near our hotel.
We then walked 20 minutes away to the Spice Market/Egyptian Bazaar area. It was buzzing!
We also stopped to get baklava at a famous chain called Hamiz Mustafa. Delicious!
It was time to head back to the airport. However, I wanted to do a quick shopping detour at Decathlon. We took a taxi from our hotel to the Taksim area. I do not say this lightly, this might have been the craziest drive of my life. Our driver made so many unhinged moves that nearly resulted in our deaths – and he never broke a sweat. I don’t know if all the drivers here are crazy or if it’s just him, but I am so thankful that Istanbul has an extensive public transit system.
The taxi driver could not take us to the store because there was a giant rally of the Galatasaray football club, known for having the craziest fans in all of Europe. The reputation is accurate because we saw fires on the street!
After purchasing my Decathlon shoes (a tradition), we walked down a PACKED Istikal Street to the Taksim Metro to head to the airport. No chance of taking another taxi. The journey back for some reason felt a lot faster. At 20:00, we flew to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.
Final Thoughts:
While my one-day stopover was hardly enough time to see even Istanbul, let alone the Sultanahmet area, I did not feel any pressure to see certain places because I had properly been to Istanbul before. It was so lovely to walk around and see Maisie’s reactions to the city.
While the city in general is cheap, the obnoxious pricing for the tourist attractions really turned me off. Yes, there is a lot more to see than just the historic sights, but it’s hard to imagine going to Istanbul (or Türkiye as a whole) and not seeing the history. For this reason, I would recommending staying away from Türkiye until the tourism ministry comes back down to earth.
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