Cultured Travel Guide Books - Time Out Istanbul |
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List Price: $19.95
Our Price: $3.75
Your Save: $ 16.20 ( 81% )
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 4 weeks
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 915
EAN: 9781904978824
ISBN: 1904978827
Label: Time Out Publishing
Manufacturer: Time Out Publishing
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 300
Publication Date: 2005-10-10
Publisher: Time Out Publishing
Studio: Time Out Publishing |
| Spotlight Customer Reviews: |
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Many good information
Comment: Turkey is well known for her hospitality. And we the Turks welcome people from all the world. Tourists love our music, culture cities and food.
You will enjoy this book. It gives you a complete idea of what you will see in Istanbul. I live in Istanbul and I know what the writer of this book is writing about. Come to Turkey and we will receive you with a big smile.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An exceptional guide to Istanbul
Comment: We used this guide on a recent trip to Istanbul, and by contrast used the Lonely Planet Turkey guide outside of Istanbul (Izmir and Selcuk). The contrast couldn't be greater: while Lonely Planet thinks that comprehensiveness is a virtue -- including hotels and restaurants that are in fact trash -- Time Out only lists places that you really *should* go to. Time Out's signal-to-noise ratio is incredibly high. We only regret that we didn't have time to see all the sites that Time Out recommended.
One travel note: after grabbing coffee at Pierre Loti Cafe, overlooking the Old Galata and Ataturk Bridges, we ambled down the hill to a mosque that Time Out described as the third-holiest site in Islam. We took off our shoes and my girlfriend covered her head with a scarf; we then stood at the back of the mosque at prayer time. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. The moral for me is: follow the book's advice, but allow ample time to wander off the beaten path.
Customer Rating:
Summary: best istanbul guidebook i found
Comment: I just went to Istanbul without much time to plan the trip so i made up for it by buying almost every guidebook available. This was the stand-out, for general information, for places to go and for the fabulous maps at the back. If you're only getting one guide, get this one. It's the first time I've purchased a TimeOut Guide, but I'll be looking at them first for my next trip.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: very good
Comment: i think this must be the best guide for istanbul. Although the maps could have been more detailed
Customer Rating:
Summary: A savvy and slick insider's guide to present day Istanbul
Comment: I just returned from 4 days in Istanbul using a hot-off-the-press copy of this guide and cannot recommend it highly enough. Given the layers of history and multitude of sites this city has to offer many guidebooks seem to forget to detail the modern life of the city. The Time Out guide has far and away the most up-to-date information about the present day life and cultural activities of this stunningly beautiful, vibrant and surprisingly hip city. Keep in mind that Istanbul has changed a lot in the past few years and if you are interested in the latest restaurants, nightlife, hotels and shopping options in addition to the traditional historic sites tour-route, this will be a great primary guidebook for you. The book is filled with a lot of current photos and interesting sidebars and highlights that are very helpful in narrowing down the multitude of possible ways to spend your time.
Time Out gives you an insider's view of the city from an expat-resident perspective and though its listings are much more opinionated than standard guidebooks, this is a very good thing. The additional info you'll get on everything from standard tourist sites to off-the-beaten-track hammams will help steer you in a direction that best suites your personal aesthetic, comfort level and style of travel. The guide is very well indexed and organized so it's easy to locate the information you need while you are out and about. I found the section on Bosphorus ferries and day trips out of the city particularly useful and much more in depth than other guides. Be sure to pick up a copy of the monthly English language Time Out Istanbul magazine as soon as you arrive for event schedules, music listings and articles on what is going on in the city while you are there as it provides a seamless "update" to the guide itself.
The maps in the back of the guide are fairly detailed, but are printed on several pages. If you plan to do a lot of walking, particularly in areas outside the central historic Sultanahmet district, I would recommend supplementing this guide with a more detailed city map such as the Istanbul Map (Travel Reference Map) as this city is a maze of back alleys and winding, unmarked passageways and it's a bit difficult tracking down shops and restaurants using the included maps. If you like history this book provides an intelligent and well written intro and an excellent list of recommended reading. Use this guide to build the day's itinerary, choose restaurants, shopping venues and activities and then add a little Freeley (John Freely's Istanbul) and recent Nobel prize winner Orhan Pamuk (Istanbul: Memories and the City) to your in-flight reading list.
If you want a hip, insightful and savvy guide to the lively city of today, this is a wonderful guide that will not steer you wrong. If you are doing the standard loop of historic sites in old Istanbul, then many other city guidebooks provide perfectly adequate coverage as well. Beware that many country-specific guidebooks to Turkey provide rather thin coverage of the city itself.
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| Editorial Reviews: |
Capital of two major empires - the Byzantine and Ottoman - Istanbul is rich with monuments, from the earliest of Christian cathedrals to the most decadent of oriental palaces. The city's bazaars offer shopping at its rawest; a glittery array of one million and one merchants, no departments, no signs, no loyalty cards. It boasts a cuisine descended from the courts of the sultans, and only starts to party once the UK has gone to bed. Surrounded by sea, built on seven hills and with a panoramic profile of spiky minarets and cascading domes, from almost any angle it's breathtakingly gorgeous.
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