Jan. 1 Tuesday New Year’s Day – All administration buildings, schools and post offices, as well as most businesses are closed on this day. Overall a calm, family oriented day in large cities (Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir) with crowds focusing on shopping and public areas if the weather is not too cold. Many people use the day off …
I am from Ankara. I used to travel to Istanbul two or three times a year. Nowadays it is more like once every other year or so. This is about my experience as an outsider. It is huge It takes about four and half hours to reach Istanbul from Ankara. And another three hours to …
I grew up in Istanbul and left the city when I was 18 years old to study in USA. Since then I have traveled to 12 countries and 42 cities. I still have a lot to see in this world. Yet, I must admit that I have not seen anywhere like Istanbul yet. To me, …
Istanbul Ataturk Airport – IST is in the European side of the city and is quite well connected with the city and there are various methods of transportation you can use to reach the various districts of the city. If this is your first visit to the city, you will more than likely be staying either …
Bodrum is one of the most popular holiday destinations in Turkey. It is on the southern side of the Aegean Sea. It offers many beautiful beaches, lots of nearby attractions. And it is best known for its night life. There is always something going out there, any time of the day. Beaches There are multiple nearby beaches. …
Finding cheap tickets to Turkey is becoming more and more difficult considering that Turkey is currently the 7th most popular touristic destination to visit in the world. I would strongly recommend checking the price of your individual flight segments using Google and Bing’s flight search engine. As of March 2013, best ticket prices can be found between LAX …
Antalya is one of my favorite cities in the world. My dream retirement city. It is mostly a coastal city developed in parallel to the sea. There are a bunch of amazing small towns administratively connected to Antalya. Each one of them easily deserves a blog post of their own. Here I will talk about the …
First time travelers will often ask me about the one major place to go. Based on what I know about them I will recommend a few places. Istanbul is almost always on top of that list. It is a great place for sure and serves to many interests. However there are many other, smaller places …
tl;dr Easiest way for finding out the current local time is to make a Google search. Let’s say you need to call someone in Turkey. A loved one, or someone who is helping you with organizing your trip. You need to know the time there before you can call them. It might get a bit …
There are four almost distinct seasons in Istanbul. Beware you are not traveling to the Arabian dessert, it does get quite cold and snow in Istanbul during the winter season. The Bosphorus (the water channel that goes through the city setting the boundaries for the Asian and European continents) has even frozen couple of times in the city’s history. If this …