School Holiday trip to Istanbul

Readers mail…..
From….Pondering traveller… 

Taking advantage of the cheap winter flights we decided on a few days in Istanbul during the school holidays. There is plenty to entertain kids of all ages and a long weekend is thoroughly recommended! (All prices in this article I have converted to GBP at the exchange rate at the time of writing).

Focused on children’s activities rather than shopping and night life we opted for a fairly central hotel in the Golden Horn area. We chose the excellent Movenpick hotel which gave us water views, a really nice room and tasty breakfast (which passed the fresh orange juice test!).  This hotel worked out around £100 a night B+B which seemed reasonable for a room with 3 occupants in a branded 5* in a major city.  There are 100s of hotels though, and it is well worth deciding on the area you want and then spending 30 mins on Trip Advisor looking at facilities and reviews.

A word or two on transport. Istanbul is very well served with buses, trams, and metro.  With a bit of planning, you can take advantage of these excellent ways of getting around. We used a standard yellow taxi from SAW airport to the hotel. The taxi was metered and cost about £39 with tip for the one-hour journey.

The hotel recommended we use Uber for short trips around the city and once we tried this we continued to do so throughout our stay.  After industrial action by Yellow cab workers, Uber is now provided by standard yellow cabs, so you have a choice to book via the app or simply wave down a taxi and use a metered service. Prices are similar for the 2 methods.  Average trip prices were around £6-8 for 15-25 min journeys (putting TRNC taxi prices to shame; and fuel is more expensive in Turkey….)  We were conscious of the rumours about being ripped off by taxi drivers but, when not using the Uber system, we were careful to check that the meter had been restarted at the beginning of the journey (a couple of times they tried to start us off with the meter showing a significant amount).  The other scam is to demand Euros or USD at a daft exchange rate.

We were spoilt for choice for eating out and did not have a bad meal.  We really liked the buffet cafetiere style cafes where all the food choices are on display.  Prices there are very reasonable. We were surprised to find that alcohol prices are very high compared with TRNC.  Average wine price was around £8 for a tiny glass.

There are some fantastic shopping malls in Istanbul with a very wide range of branded shops.  Being such a heavily populated city, it is not surprising that these malls get extremely busy, particularly in the early evening, and we got a bit overwhelmed with the crowds on occasion.  You certainly need to keep kids close! Most malls have a children’s play area which is a fraught place for parents, but fun for kids.  These areas predominantly have arcade type machines which have to be paid for using a pre-charged swipe card. There is also usually a decent sized soft play climbing are, which again has to be paid for using the card.

We visited three main attractions, all of which I can highly recommend, (although the latter 2 are pretty pricy):

• Rahmin Koc museum (£26 for 2 adults, kids free). This is a marvellous waterside museum with a wonderful collection of all kinds of historic forms of transport, including full sized passenger planes, ferry, helicopters.  There is a great activities room for kids of all ages.  The museum is good for 2-3 hours of stimulation.
• Legoland (£46 for 2 adults and a child, including Sealife). This offers various things of interest in addition to the expected large Lego models.  There is a large room where Lego can be assembled and tested out on ramps and race tracks.  There is a good-sized soft play climbing area which is (thankfully!) adjacent to a café! The highlight, for us at least, was the 4D cinema where you can watch Lego cops chasing bad guys while the audience is blasted with water and buffeted with wind.
• Sealife. This is a modest sized aquarium in the same massive shopping mall as Legoland.  It is extremely well set up with a smart phone app that allows you to identify all the animals you are viewing.  There is also a small soft play area.

To conclude, Istanbul makes for a worthwhile long weekend trip for families and is also a really good shopping venue!