Hostel in Istanbul: Istanbul Hostel

Staying in a centrally located hostel in Istanbul will save a lot of money for a budget conscious traveler in many ways: you will pay very little to accommodation, minimize taxi rides and have access to public transportation to get around.

Istanbul Hostel in Sultanahmet is one of the best hostels in Istanbul if location is very important for you. It is very centrally located in the heart of Old Istanbul, Sultanahmet, the main Historic Hub. It is just a few minutes away from Blue Mosque, St.Sophia, Topkapi Palace, Underground Cistern, Turkish Baths and The Grand Bazaar.

The hostel has received a hostelworld.com Top 10 Hostel Award in September 2006 and it is newly renovated and redecorated for 2012.  It provides several accommodation options and the prices start from 10 Euro for Superior 8 and 10 bed mixed dorm. Siperior 4 and goes up to 25 Euro for Twin Private room with shared bathroom. Other than mixed dorms, the hostel also provides female only and male only dorms for 13 Euros per bed per night.

Istanbul Hostel

Istanbul Hostel's central location makes it one of the best hostels to stay in Istanbul. Since most attractions are within the old city, where the hostel is located, you will minimize your exposure to the greedy taxi drivers and since the train line connecting the old city to Bosphorus and Istanbul Metro is walking distance away, you can use public transportation to get around. The hotel also has a restaurant where you can eat cheap food and provides tourism agency services to other places in Turkey such as Capadoccia. The breakfast provided is traditional Turkish breakfast with boiled egg, cucumber, tomato, bread w/jam and olives, coffee or tea. If you are on budget, you will eat here a lot because the food in Sultanahmet is very expensive.

The hostels restaurant is at the roof terrace. This terrace provides a very beautiful view of the Marmara Sea and St.Sophia. The rooftop terrace is also a great place to have a view of the old Istanbul city or watching the sunset with a beer and a book.

One drawback of this hostel is the lack of meeting room to socialize with other people.

The Travertines of Pamukkale

This article is moved to Pamukkale Cotton Castle.

Boutique hotel : White House Hotel Istanbul

If you are looking for a conveniently located and affordable boutique hotel in Istanbul Turkey, White House Hotel Istanbul may be just for you. The hotel is located near some of Istanbul’s biggest attractions, in the historical peninsula of old Istanbul, and it is within walking distance to Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Topkapı Palace, Archeology Museum, the Basilica Cistern, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, the Millennium Stone and Byzantine Hippodrome, which are the most important landmarks of the city. 

Guests staying at the White House Hotel for 3 nights or more are entitled to a free one-way transfer from Ataturk Airport to the hotel. A shuttle service from Sabiha Airport to the hotel is also available. Taxi cabs and rental cars are also available nearby and can escort guests to various points of interest throughout the city.

White House Hotel Istanbul has 22 rooms with 60 beds, including 2 Superior Rooms. All rooms provide a private bathroom, high-speed and wireless internet connection, hair-dryer, direct dial telephone system, LCD TV, satellite system, mini-bar, VRF air-conditioning system, safe box, emergency alarm system, make-up mirror, hot-water machine, tea and coffee making facilities.

Guests of the White House Hotel Istanbul will find plenty of shopping and dining options in the area. The hotel offers numerous amenities, including a restaurant and a lounge bar. Other offerings include laundry service, business facilities, and concierge service. The hotel staff can also provide guests with tourist information as well as rental car services.

White House Hotel Istanbul

The hotel has a very high rating in hotelscombined.com which is 10, amazing! Over 1,500 reviews praised the hotels many aspects of this boutique hotel:  clean rooms, good food in hotel's restaurant, clean and working shower, very convenient location and helpful and polite staff.

The room prices at White House Hotel Istanbul starts from 183 USD.

Is it difficult to learn Turkish?

A couple of years ago, I have met with a Russian reporter who could speak many languages including Chinese. I have asked him how difficult was it for him to learn Chinese (at that time I was planning to learn Chinese). He told me, it was not as difficult as to learn Turkish :) I was surprised when he told this seriously but when I tried to teach Turkish to my wife later (she is Chinese and at that time she was taking Turkish language lessons), I have realized that he may be right!

Learning Turkish is difficult. The language, whose roots can be traced to Central Asia, belongs to a language family called Altaic (and interestingly in the same family with Japonic language families and the Korean language).

The most difficult aspect of Turkish language, and the aspect which makes it difficult to learn for many, is its extensive usage of agglutination (as you will see below). For example, below is the decomposition of a relatively extreme case of agglutination in Turkish language. Avrupalılatırabildiklerimizdenmisiniz is a single Turkish word which means Are you from the ones that we could make European !!!

A more common example of agglutination can be like this:

Question : Dün akşam neredeydin? (Where were you last night?)

Answer   : Odandaydım! (I was in your room!)

Now the composition is like this:

Oda                         : Room

Odan                       : Your Room (if it was odam, it was my room!)

Odanda                   : In your room

Odandaydi              : Was in your room

Odandaydim           : I was in your room.

But many people who start talking Turkish skip a lot of agglutination and they can be perfectly understood by the Turkish people. One of my friends wife, a Singaporean, speaks Turkish usually without all those suffixes and I can perfectly understand her and tolerate this because she is not a native speaker. But Turkish verbs without suffixes are usually used to give order and some suffixes make them polite so they actually would sound arrogant :)

Turkey Public Holidays 2013 Calendar

UPDATE : Refer this post for the calendar of 2014 : Turkey Public Holidays 2014 Calendar.

Public holidays in Turkey fall into 2 groups: The ones which commemorate the important events from the foundation days of Turkish Republic and the Muslim festivals. There are only 2 religious holidays but they tend to be long, usually Turkish take a week long holiday during these holidays and business life almost stops.

Religious holidays for Muslim festivals and their date change every year since they are based on lunar calendar.

Below are the Turkish holidays in 2013 with their dates:

Turkey 2013 Holidays
Here is the list of Turkey 2013 holidays in Turkey 2013 calendar:

New Year Holiday
(Turkish Yilbasi)
January 1st, 2013 Tuesday
Turkey celebrates Gregorian Calendar's first year as new year and most of the time December 31st is also a half day holiday. Since the holiday is Tuesday, many will merge this with the weekend and create a 4 day holiday for themselves.

National Sovereignty and Children's Day 
(Turkish Ulusal Egemenlik ve Cocuk Bayrami)
April 23rd, 2013, Tuesday
Grand National Assembly of Turkey has first opened its door at Ankara in 23 April 1920 and the day is a holiday for the commemoration of the event. This official holiday is dedicated to the children.

Labour and Solidarity Day
(Turkish Turkish Emek ve Dayanışma Günü)
May 1st 2013, Wednesday
This is May Day holiday, which was removed from the list of public holidays in 1981 by the military rulers of 1980 Turkish coup d'état. 28 years after, in 2009, May Day has been an official public holiday again.

Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day
(Turkish Atatürk'ü Anma Gençlik ve Spor Bayramı)
May 19th, 2013, Sunday
May 19th 1919 is a public holiday commemorating the beginning of national liberation movement initiated in 1919 by Atatürk's landing in Samsun. The holiday is dedicated to the youth.

Ramadan Feast
(Turkish Ramazan Bayrami)
August 7-8-9-10 2013


This religious fest is Eid_ul-Fitr and one of the longest holidays in Turkey and if all these days are in weekdays, Turkish tend to have a long 9 days holiday by merging this holiday with the weekends. Since August is summer time, many Turkish will flock to south for holiday and it would be difficult if not impossible to find hotel rooms and plane tickets during this time.

Victory Day
(Turkish Zafer Bayrami)
August 30, 2013, Friday
This holiday is for the commemoration of the victory at the final battle in Dumlupinar which has ended the Turkish Independence War in 1922 with a victory and it is dedicated to the armed forces.

Sacrifice Feast
(Turkish Kurban Bayrami)
October 15-16-17-18 2013
This religious fest is Eid_ul-Adha and one of the longest holidays in Turkey and if all these days are in weekdays, Turkish tend to have a long 9 days holiday by merging this holiday with the weekends. It is very difficult to find tickets and hotel rooms around this time.

Republic Day
(Turkish Cumhuriyet Bayrami)
October 28-29th, 2013
This 1.5 day holiday starts at 28th afternoon and October 29th is a full day holiday commemoration of the proclamation of the republic in 1923.

Shopping In Istanbul: Istanbul's Shopping Mall Belt

This post is moved to Oravar : Shopping in Istanbul - Istanbul Shopping Mall Belt article.

Four Seasons Hotel at Sultanahmet Istanbul, Turkey

Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul At Sultanahmet may be one of the best places to stay in Istanbul now but in the first half of the century it was indeed one of the worst! This beautiful sunflower yellow, 4-story building with guard towers enclosing an elegant courtyard was once constructed as a jailhouse in 1918/1919, in the last few years of Ottoman Empire. It has a contemporary concept and housed inmates who were awaiting trial or serving brief sentences. The design of the building is Turkish neoclassical style and it was built in the beginning of the "First National Architecture" period. After housing many inmates, including famous Turkish political political dissidents such as communist leaders Mihri Belli and Hikmet Kivilcimli, poets and writers like Nazım Hikmet, Rıfat Ilgaz, Orhan Kemal , Aziz Nesin and Kemal Tahir, the jail was abandoned on January 25, 1969 and has been neglegted until 1992. The building was later renovated and opened in 1996 as a deluxe hotel of the Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts chain and is now one of the best hotels in Istanbul.

The hotel, which has just 65 bright and comfortable guest rooms and suites, it feels like a luxury and warm boutique hotel although it is a part of a large luxury hotel chain. Four Seasons Hotel at Sultanahmet is very centrally located in old city and is walking distance away from Istanbul's main tourist attractions like Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia,  Basilica Cistern and Topkapi Palace and offers great walks through the old city.  Hotel is famous for its rooftop bar called St. Sophia Terrace which has a stunning view of old Istanbul, its Ottoman cuisine at Seasons Restaurant.

Four Seasons Hotel at Sultanahmet Rooftop Bar (Hagia Sophia behind) - Source : luxecityguides.com

The only problem is that this hotel, with its price in the range of 800+ USD per night, is quite an expensive place to stay although it will save some taxi money and significant time for leisure tourists. And there is no swimming pool in the hotel. which may not a problem in winter but a quite nice to have in hot Istanbul summers.

Sultanahmet is the old city center and is home to many historic sightseeing of Istanbul. There are many hotels in Sultanahmet catering tourists but you can also choose to look at hotels in Bosphorus, which has a great view especially in spring.

You can check the room prices and availability in Four Seasons Hotel Istanbul at Sultanahmet here:

Other hotels in Istanbul Sultanahmet (old city) and Istanbul

Hotels in Sultanahmet	... Bosphorus	... and other hotels in Istanbul

Butterfly Valley: One of the best places to have holiday in Turkey

This post is moved to Butterfly Valley: One of the best places to have holiday in Turkey.

Number of international tourist arrivals to Istanbul up 18.7 per cent

In the first 6 months of 2012, number of foreign tourists visiting Istanbul has been 4 million and 231 thousand, an 18.7 per cent increase compared to the first 6 months of 2011. The numbers are collected from Istanbul's Ataturk and Sabiha Gokcen Airports, Haydarpasa train station, Pendik and Kadikoy ports. 11.3 per cent of these foreign tourists were Germans, 6.2 per cent of them were Russian tourists and 5.2 per cent were Americans:

1 - Germany, 479,147
2 - Russia, 262,391
3- USA, 219,183
4 - France, 190,432
5- UK, 190,092
6 - Iran, 189,532
7 - Italy, 178,231
8 - The Netherlands, 121,680
9 - Libya, 94,292
10- Ukraine, 92,554
11 - Japan, 87,775
12 - Spain, 85,079
13 - Iraq, 84,414
14 - Azerbaijan, 83,054
15 - Saudi Arabia, 78,206
16 -  Others, 1,795,380


Istanbul Culture and Tourism Manager Prof. Dr. Ahmet Emre Bilgili said:

"Istanbul has hosted 4,230,612 international tourists in the first 6 months 2012 and this is 19 per cent increase compared to the first 6 months of 2011. If we assume that this trend continues until the end of 2012, the city can close the year with 9.5 million tourists."

Istanbul Hagia Sophia

Istanbul, the economic and cultural capital of Turkey, is one of the most important tourism spots of Turkey with thousands of hotels and other tourist oriented industries are catering to both leisure and business visitors. The city has two international airports handling more than 50 Million passengers a year and several ports for cruisers and ships.Istanbul is also one of the world’s major conference destinations and is an increasingly popular choice for the world’s leading international associations.[1]

Source : Istanbul 2012'nin ilk yarisini yuzde 18.7 artisla kapatti (Turkish)

[1] - Economy of Istanbul

Seabird Airlines offers coast to coast flights in Turkey

Seabird Airlines is the only airline in Turkey which is equipped with sea planes capable of landin and taking off from sea and air strips. Seabird Airlines has been established in 2010 by Kürşad Arusan (Founder and Chairman of the Board)[1] and gained necessary permits from Turkish Civil Aviation Authority (SHGM) recently[1].

Sea Bird Airways carried out their first test flight between Alacati-Istanbul in June 2012 and is Turkey’s first and only Air Taxi / Airline company to land and take off from water.

The airline flies from Halic Istanbul to destinations like Bozcaada, Gemlik (Bursa), Alacati (Izmir) and Bodrum. Starting from January 2nd 2014, Seabird Airlines also offers flights from Halic to Kocaeli. The flight will take 22 minutes.

According to Seabird Airlines although Kocaeli is right next to Istanbul, because of the traffic the travel time from European side of Istanbul and Kocaeli is quite long.[3]

Although the airline’s flights were quite popular, they had some problems on their journey in Turkish aviation history. Seabird Airlines has started with one plane which meant that if there was a technical problem with the plane there were no flights (no other airline in Turkey has the same type of plane to temporarily rent).

But now they have 2 planes and a third is on its way so these problems would probably be a matter of the past.

Seabird Airlines destination map

The airline operates DHC-6 Twin Otter, a Canadian 19-passenger STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) utility aircraft, powered by Pratt&Whitney PT6-27 turboprop engines. These planes are capable of landing and taking off from sea and conventional runways. One of the most exiting experience of these flights are their low altitude which allows you to have a close-up view of Turkey which is quite impossible to have with a high flying jet airliner. With low altitude flights, the airline offers a great bird-eye view of Turkey’s coastline with relatively affordable prices. The planes take off and land from the coast and allows passengers to save on time which would be wasted to go to an airport and clear all those security check queues.

Seabird Airlines DHC-6 Twin Otter

Other than scheduled flights, Seabird Airlines also allow you to charter sea planes for group travel. With planes of 19 passangers, you can individually or with a group charter a flight from the airline and fly without restrictions of time and destination. The airline also offers an exiting Istanbul Sightseeing tour from air.

[1] –  Seabird Airlines
[2] –  Sea-plane’s first landing in Halic; DHA General Manager Cebeci on aircraft
[3] – Izmit’e ucak seferi basliyor (Turkish).