Welcome to a new segment of my blog, ‘24 hours in…’! I’ve been so lucky since returning from 6 months of travelling last year to continue exploring the world, thanks to my fab job. While visiting for work, I’ve done my best to get some exploring in around my work commitments and this has led on to the idea of ‘24 hours in…’! While these may not be the most detailed blogs, I’m hoping it’ll spark your interest into exploring somewhere new & start your itinerary off with some ideas. 

Popular for city breaks, Istanbul is a bustling city with mosques, markets and more. Whilst I’ve been to Turkey before I’ve never been to this city, so I was excited to fit in some time for exploring where we could. We visited in November so I wasn’t sure how the weather would be but it was actually perfect for exploring, warm in the sunshine but not hot, light coats but no woolies needed. 

One of the most famous things to do is to go to The Blue Mosque. Constructed in the 1600’s, the functioning mosque is open to all, with visitors permitted to enter too. Since 1985, The Blue Mosque has been acknowledged as a UNESCO site as a part of the Historic Areas of Istanbul. To enter you will need to cover your hair if you’re female, so I would recommend packing a lightweight scarf with you, but if like us, you don’t have a scarf to wear, you are able to borrow one. The architecture alone makes it worth a visit, so I would recommend including a stop here. 

Right next to The Blue Mosque is the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque. This is another classic site to see in Istanbul as it is just so visually stunning. The Hagia Sophia is a also an UNESCO Heritage Site and up until it was reopened as a working mosque in 2020, it was a museum between 1935 and 2019. The site has been home to a various number of churches during different reigns such as the Ottoman Empire before World War One – it has a very complicated history. We viewed the mosque from the outside, but didn’t go in to explore as the call for prayer was sounding as we were approaching. To enter at this time we would have needed to queue which we didn’t want to do and we would be going in whilst people would be praying, which felt a little intrusive. If you can find time though, it definitely will be worth a look around for the years of architectural history on site, some remains date back to the year 415!

Another place I wanted to check out was the Grand Bazaar. A rabbit warren of shops, the Grand Bazaar is a hugely popular spot for tourists. Even if you’re not looking to snag yourself a bargain, the indoor market is one of the oldest in the world so worth a look around for this reason. Inside the bazaar, the ceilings are adorned with details, mosaic walls and water fountains. Expect to barter/haggle with the locals over anything you’re looking to buy as it’s tradition in Turkey. Of course, with this custom, it is important to remain polite when negotiating prices, but it can sometimes be difficult to find a fair price. I don’t enjoy haggling for this purpose and would rather avoid it! I did attempt to haggle the price of some pin badges I was interested in buying, but this was more accidental as I said no to the price he quoted and walked away and the shop owner came running after to agree to the fee I’d suggested. If you feel pressured to buy, but you are not interested, be firm but polite in your refusal and walk away. 

The rest of the time we had to explore, we spent it exploring the streets on foot. There are plenty of small shops, cafes and SO many local cats to stroke. Try some Turkish coffee or some Turkish delight. I tried another traditional food, Baklava for the first time too. It was delicious! 

If you’re looking for more to fill your time, I’d recommend checking out some of the museums in the city or heading out of the city to the Topkapi Palace. This was an initial request of mine, but we just unfortunately didn’t have time. If you’re there for a weekend, a trip to the palace is a perfect addition to your itinerary.

A few notes – We used the metro to get around the city, it was slightly complicated as we struggled to buy tickets from the machines as some of our notes weren’t crisp enough or were too high in denomination. Once we did get a ticket sorted, it wasn’t the easiest to navigate especially as quite a lot of the routes were closed with essential maintenance work, so it’s worth checking in advance of buying your ticket. Alternatively there are plenty of taxis but they are notorious for overcharging tourists, or agreeing on a price and then increasing it drastically on arrival at your destination. For this reason, we stuck to using Uber as this was an agreed, prepaid fee we were happy with. We did use local taxis a couple of times, but we bartered on the price and paid in advance so there were no issues at the end of our journey. Of course I don’t want to generalise all taxi drivers in Turkey as they are not all like this, but it is worth being aware of. 

Hope this inspires you to get adding Istanbul to your wish list!

Thanks for reading!