First Time in Istanbul: The Mistakes That Cost You a Day

Planning around closing days you did not know existed

More first Istanbul mornings are wasted on this than anything else. The Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar close on Sundays and on public holidays. Topkapı Palace has traditionally closed on Tuesdays, and Dolmabahçe Palace on Mondays. Working mosques — including Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque — close to visitors during each of the five daily prayers, with the longest closure around Friday midday. None of this is hidden, but none of it is on the map you are holding either. Check the current days on the official museum and national-palace sites, then build the week around them rather than discovering them at a locked gate.

• Sunday: bazaars shut. Make it a ferry, Balat or Kadıköy day instead.
• Friday midday: mosques are closed to visitors for longer than usual. Put the palaces or a museum there.
• Confirm the weekly closing days for Topkapı and Dolmabahçe for your travel dates — they are set by the operating institution and do change.

Basing yourself in Sultanahmet and never leaving it

Sultanahmet is the right place to spend your first day and a defensible place to sleep on a short trip. It is the wrong place to spend three days. The restaurants immediately around the monuments are built for people who will never come back, the streets empty after dark, and you can be in the city for seventy-two hours without meeting an Istanbullu who is not selling you something. Cross the Golden Horn to Karaköy and Cihangir for dinner, and give a full half-day to Kadıköy on the Asian side. The ferry across is the cheapest thing you will do all trip and the single best hour of it.

Getting into an unmetered taxi

The Istanbul taxi problem is specific and predictable: a driver refuses the meter and quotes a flat fare, or takes a long way round, most often on airport runs and outside tourist hotels. The fix is equally specific. Use İBB’s own iTaksi app, or BiTaksi, so the ride is logged and priced. Insist on the meter (“taksimetre, lütfen”) and get out if it is refused. Better still, for most journeys inside the city the metro, tram, Marmaray and ferries are faster than a car, because Istanbul traffic is not a rumour.

Treating the Bosphorus cruise as something you must buy

You do not need a ticketed cruise to see the Bosphorus. The Şehir Hatları public ferries are ordinary transport, and the Eminönü–Kadıköy and Eminönü–Üsküdar crossings cost a standard Istanbulkart fare for a deck, a glass of tea and the skyline. Buy a cruise if you specifically want the long run up to Anadolu Kavağı near the Black Sea, a guide, or dinner. Otherwise put that money into a hammam or a meyhane dinner and take the commuter boat.

Misreading the Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar is a genuine 15th-century covered market and also a highly practised sales environment. Two habits make it enjoyable rather than exhausting. First, the first price is an opening position, not an insult — bargaining is expected, unhurried and friendly, and walking away is a normal move rather than a rejection. Second, know that the same goods are cheaper and calmer in Kadıköy, in the Arasta Bazaar behind the Blue Mosque, or in the workshops around the Süleymaniye. Go to the Grand Bazaar for the building; buy where you like the seller.

Underestimating the hills, the distances and the water

Istanbul reads as compact on a map and is not. Galata and Cihangir are stair country, Balat is steeper than it photographs, and the Historic Peninsula is a hill with a bazaar on it. More importantly, the water means a two-kilometre hop can be a ferry, a funicular and a tram. Group your days geographically — peninsula, then Galata and Beyoğlu, then the Asian side — rather than by what you want to see most, and wear shoes you would walk fifteen kilometres in.