Istanbul rewards the unhurried.
We are a registered, owner-operated boutique travel agency in Istanbul, and most of what we do is private guided tours. Your party alone, your own licensed guide, and a day that answers to nobody else on it. Guests come to us from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, and the reason is almost always the same one: they would like the city on their own terms.
Istanbul is a city of hills, worn stone and long flights of steps, and most of what is written about it says so as a warning. It is only a warning when somebody else is holding the itinerary.
Travel privately and the walking becomes a preference rather than a condition. There is a second Istanbul beneath the first — shaded courtyards, benches under the plane trees, and a strait you cross seated, with a glass of tea in your hand. Which of the two you see depends entirely on who sets the pace, and with us that is you.
What changes when the tour is private?
There is no one to keep up with.
On a shared tour the route is fixed before anyone arrives. The guest who wants to linger in a courtyard is the guest keeping a coach of strangers waiting. Everyone feels it, and most people give in and move on.
On a private tour that pressure does not exist. If a gallery is worth staying in, you stay in it. If the second mosque of the morning is one too many, it comes off the route. Nothing follows from that — no extra charge, no shorter day, no look from anyone.
You have come a long way to be here. The day bending to you, rather than the other way round, is the whole reason to book privately.
Where is the walking, honestly?
Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, the Basilica Cistern and the Grand Bazaar all stand within a few streets of each other. That is the gift of the Old City, and the reason the day is made on foot.
It is old ground, though. Much of it is cobbled, and some of it slopes. The day takes in either Topkapi Palace or the Basilica Cistern — the choice is yours — and the two ask quite different things of you. Topkapi is a set of courtyards to cross in the open. The Cistern goes down a staircase into the cool, and comes back up the same one.
None of this is hidden, and none of it has to be endured. Your guide can shorten the route, change its order, or leave a monument out, and the price stays the same. Tell us beforehand what you would like the day to ask of you, and we build the route around your answer — instead of finding out somewhere in the third courtyard.
Where can you sit?
Everywhere, once you are with someone who knows where.
The mosque courtyards are the best of them. Nuruosmaniye, at the gates of the Grand Bazaar, is a ring of cool stone and shade a few steps from one of the busiest streets in the city. Gülhane Park lies along the outer wall of Topkapi, with benches under the trees. Tea comes in tulip glasses, costs almost nothing, and nobody minds how long you keep the chair.
On our Two Continents day you are seated for the crossing as well, with the wind coming off the water and Europe going quietly astern. That is not a compromise for anyone, at any age.
A pause is not time lost. It is usually where the guiding happens — the questions a monument leaves you with, and a guide with the time to answer them.
Can you see Istanbul without the walking?
Yes. And it happens to be the finest thing the city does.
On a private Bosphorus tour the yacht is yours, and you are seated from the moment you step aboard. Istanbul does the moving: the Ottoman palaces along the European shore, the wooden yalı mansions at the water’s edge, the fortresses, the bridges, and two continents passing on either side of you.
Guests who take one day on the water and one among the monuments tell us afterwards that the water day is the one they remember. If you have a single day in Istanbul, and walking is the question, this is the day.
Is there a car?
On our Tailor-Made Istanbul tour, yes. A gentle, accessible pace with a private car between stops is one of the shapes that day can take. Ask for it, and we will quote it that way.
On the Old City tour, no. That day is made on foot from beginning to end. We would rather tell you here than have you find out at the first corner. If having a car with you matters, say so when you write, and we will build the tailor-made day instead.
What about the tickets and the queues?
We hold your monument tickets before you land. Those advance tickets are issued to registered Turkish agencies, and we are one.
What we will not do is call that skipping a line. Turkey has no skip-the-line product and no priority entry, and the security check applies to every visitor without exception. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something that does not exist.
What a good guide does instead is read the day: which monument is quiet when, which gate moves faster, and what order to take them in. That is knowing a city, not buying a pass. There is more on it in our note on what can be arranged in advance.
How many days?
Two, more often than not. The Old City on one day; the water, or the Asian side, on the other. Our two-day Istanbul tour holds the pair under a single quote.
If you are coming from Los Angeles, Dallas, Sydney or Melbourne, the first day after that flight is yours to use as you find it. Some guests drop their bags and want to be out in the city that afternoon. Others would rather start fresh the next morning. Neither is the right answer — tell us which you are when you send your dates, and we will place the first day around it.
Which of our tours suits this best?
All of them are private, and every one of them can be softened. These are the ones our guests choose most often when pace is the question.
- The Old City — Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Grand Bazaar, and either Topkapi Palace or the Basilica Cistern, whichever you prefer. Made on foot, and the route is yours to shorten.
- The Bosphorus — your own yacht along the strait, past the palaces and the waterfront mansions, seated from the moment you step aboard. The finest thing the city does.
- Two Continents — the ferry across to Kadıköy and the neighborhoods where Istanbul actually lives. Much of it is spent sitting on the water.
- The food tour — a Turkish breakfast, the street classics, the best baklava in the city, then across to the family-run kitchens of the Asian side. A day arranged around tables.
- Two days — the Old City and the water, under a single quote. What we suggest most often.
- Tailor-made — when you would like a private car between the stops and a gentler shape to the day.
If you already know the city and only want a licensed guide beside you, we offer the guiding on its own.
Planning it
Write to us with your dates, how many of you there are, and anything you would like the days to take into account. What comes back is a proposed itinerary and a clear quote, with the entrance fees already included and nothing left to settle later.
If you would rather read a little further first: whether a private tour of Istanbul is worth it sets out what private guiding gives you, and what to wear in Istanbul covers the mosque dress code — which catches out more visitors than anything else in this city.
Then the pace is yours.