Hi live,

I didn't realize you needed to be back at Sirkeci by 7:30 for the Whirling Dervish performance. My initial thought was that you would have the morning & lunch on the Asian side and the afternoon and evening at Buyakada, but I don't see how you can make it back from Buyakada by 7:30. Especially since nobody can find the October ferry schedule, which is probably very limited compared to the summer schedule. What you might think about doing is taking a ferry to the Asian side for dinner on Sunday, October 7, after you finish the archeological museum. You would have enough time to eat and wander the streets a bit, and it would free up the entire day on Monday, October 8, for Princes Island. (Oh how I wish we could locate the October ferry schedule. Without knowing when they run to and from Prince's Islands this is a tad bit difficult.)

Jo

I would want to concur with osumom. I would not try to do the Asian side plus Buyukada and be at Sirkeci by 7:30. osumom's alternative for Sunday seems more realistic.

I think you have plenty of time scheduled for Ephesus and Selcuk. You might want to include a trip to Sirince. It is a Greek style village a few kilometers from Selcuk. The drive up the mountain is pretty. The village people have crafts to sell. There is fun fruit wine. It is a good place to spend an hour or two.

Also, try to include Mary's House while you are in the Ephesus area. This is supposedly where Mary spent the last years of her life and where she died. It is a beautiful peaceful place....well worth an hour of your time. The tranquility just seeps into your soul, which is a good experience after the tourist crowds at Ephesus.

Otherwise, everything looks good - very ambitious but doable.

Thank you both for your sage advice. I think I'll juggle things around a bit - maybe go to the Modern the day we arrive?? And go to the Anatolian side the afternoon after we get back from Izmir.

Do you think we could go to Princes Island and be back for the 7:30 performance?

Hello Livetotravel,

It looks like a great plan, lots of days are very doable I guess.

Day one, fine, I suggest a lunch on Divan yol between the Aya Sophia and the Grand Bazar, go for the Sultanahmet köftecesi Selim Usta as I mentioned in another post.

Day 2, OK, you might have some time left in the evening, perhaps leavve the ferry near Ortaköy or Besiktas and spend soem time there.

Day 3 and 4, seems alright

Day 5, wonderful day, I love Istanbul Modern museum, and I love Hamdi! Near Istanbul Modern is a nice mosque called Kilic Ali Pasa cam, and from the mosque to the right is a restaurant for a famous, simple but deliciousTurkish dish called kuru fasulye (white beans in tomatosauce and dice of lamb,

look here:

tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g293974-i368-k1062…

Day 6, Topkapi Palace is beautiful, it takes at least one day. I have never been on a sunday, I wonder if it could be more crowded, perhaps somebody like Alper or Konzano might know.

Day 7,

you can find the ferry time table here:

www.ido.com.tr

There are always daily ferries from the Princes islands to Kadiköy and on to Kabatas. Perhaps if you manage to be on the islands early (before the crowd come it too, on a monday though might be not so bad) then you could return like 15.15 and leave at Kadiköy and you could just walk around

Day 8, very busy day

Day 9, I have not visited Dolmabahce Palace myself, for some reason it did not happen yet. I guess it is fine. I love to walk down from Taksim down all Istiklal street and have a nice lunch somewhere or a coffee.

You should be very flexible though. Do the outside things on sunny days, keep an eye on the weather forcast, it would be a shame to plan to go to the islands on a rainy day!

I hope you will have a very nice time!

I do not know if you can go to Buyukada in the afternoon and get back to Sirkeci by 7:30. It is especially difficult to determine if this is possible without the October ferry schedule. The ferry to Buyukada takes 90 minutes each way.

It appears that you are not leaving Izmir until 11:00 am. You will have to fly back to Istanbul, return your luggage to your hotel and catch the ferry to Buyukada. I do not think you will have improved your time situation by switching a visit to the Asian side with a return trip from Izmir, particularly since your flight from Izmir does not depart until 11:00 am.

It may be that you cannot do everything you want to do in this time frame. You have a couple of alternatives. One is to decide what you are willing to drop now. The other is to be prepared to miss the performance at Sirkeci if you are not able to get back from Buyukada in time.

I have one other suggestion. We only spent one night in Selcuk. We arrived at the airport at Izmir at 9:00 in the morning, hired a private car and a private guide and were finished with Ephesus by 2:00 pm. We then had time for Mary's Place. We got up early the next morning and visited the fortress and the Church of St. John and we also went up to Sirince. We had lunch in Selcuk....did some shopping. Bought a carpet, and then returned to Izmir for a late afternoon flight back to Istanbul. We had ample time to do everything in the Selcuk/Izmir area and were still able to catch a 5:00 pm flight back to Istanbul.

I notice that on Friday you have nothing scheduled for your full day in Selcuk/Ephesus. If it were me I would come back late on Friday. That would give you an additional 1/2 day. If you were back from Ephesus Friday evening you could get up and go straight to Buyukada Saturday morning. Then you would have plenty of time to make sure you are back for the performance at Sirkeci at 7:30.

Alternatively you could spend all of Friday doing Buyukada at a leisurely pace. On Monday, having already been to Buyukada you could go to Kadikoy, come back and stop in at the Spice Bazaar (which I do not think you have budgeted enough time to do with your current schedule) and then move down a few blocks to Sirkeci for the performance.

I will admit that I am a poor person to give advice on how to do as many things as possible in a single day. This phillosopy is the opposite of how we travel since we have retired. Your schedule would just reduce me to a clock-watching bundle of nerves. When we were younger, however, we did trips that were as carefully planned as the one you are preparing. An abundance of energy creates more time, and I am sure that you will bring that level of enthusiasm to your experience in Istanbul.

osumom may have different advice about Buyukada. I think much of this decision would depend upon ferry schedules which are not yet available.

I see that you are using Insight Tours. You might email Rina and ask her if she has October ferry schedules. If you had that information we could quickly determine if you have enough time to do Buyukada, Kadikoy and the Sirkeci performance in a single day. For that matter, you could just ask Rina to comment on this schedule and see if she thinks it is realistic. She does lots of work for forum people and I am confident she would share her professional opinion with you.

Be sure to pack comfortable walking shoes! I would also toss in a rain poncho. It does rain in Istanbul in October, and you cannot afford to spend a rainy day doing anything other than what you have scheduled.

Good luck. I am sure you will have a wonderful time. Quite frankly, you will have seen almost as much of Istanbul in your short time as it took my husband and me nearly one month to do. - BR

I see now, why the questions about the ferry to Büyükada keeps coming back. Automatically I thought the seaon would be until end of October but the schedule changes half September.

I have an old brochure from last winter.

We usually go every winter at least once to the islands. And we can go early morning from Bostanci and we return late afternoon, but I do remember there are more ferry's returning.

Good luck with this plan!

Thanks everyone once again.

The October 9th schedule is in fact a semi-private tour with Insight Travel - so those locations are what they cover - my main desire was to see the Walls, Chora and Eyup - it is a full-day, they pick us up at 8:45 AM and we're done at 5:00 PM. The restaurant I mentioned near Eyup is where Rina takes her tour guests for lunch (Mhimandar and it's sister place, a bakery I think, called Ensar). There is one other couple going along with us on this tour and Rina offered us a great deal at 65 Euros per person - all inclusive. This will actually be our first tour ever in 30 years of traveling!

We may just have to scale back our expectations. The irony is that we are not by nature crazy, itinerary driven, travelers - we actually opt more for leisurely, go-with-the-flow, type of travel. But because we believe that there are just too many places and not enough time, this probably will be our only visit to Istanbul, etc, so we wanted to get has much in as possible.

Let me ask you all this...if you were going to cut one or more of the following, what would it be??

Istanbul Modern

Princes Island

Whirling Dervishes

Maybe we'll go to the Anatolian side for the afternoon and dinner on the day we return from Izmir instead of going to the Modern. That would leave the whole day on Monday the 8th for Buyukada and if we missed the Dervishes at 7:30 PM, so be it.

Thanks again, you guys are the best and your advice as been simply invaluable!

Geez live,

I don't know how to answer the question of which one to leave out. I guess it depends on what you're most interested in. For me, I'd probably ditch the Istanbul Modern and replace it with the Asian side, but that's just because I'm not all that into modern art. You might absolutely adore it.

The reason I now think it's best for you to have a full day for Bukuyada (other than not knowing the fall ferry schedule) is that it gets darker a lot earlier in October than in July, so you don't want to be arriving at Bukuyada so late in the afternoon that you won't be able to see anything when you take a carriage ride around the island. While in the summer a 2:30 ferry from the Asian side is fine, in the fall you'd be arriving at approximately 4:00, which would leave you only with an hour or so of daylight left (if the carriage rides on the island even run that late in the fall).

When we were at Bukuyada, we were planning to take the 6:30 ferry back, but when we were all in line waiting for it to arrive they announced that it was delayed for an hour. Then they said it wouldn't arrive until about 8:30, which it did, but that was two hours later than scheduled. (Someone said the 6:30 ferry broke down, but I don't know if that was true or not). My point is that even when you have a good plan, it doesn't always work out. For us it wasn't an inconvenience, as we had nothing scheduled for that evening. I'd just choose the things you want to see most and make sure you have enough time to do them...and allow for unexpected delays that you'll have no control over. Besides, if you're anything like most of us, once you visit Istanbul you're definitely going to want to return, so anything you miss on this upcoming visit you can see on your next trip! You have so many neat things scheduled...I really can't wait to hear how your trip goes.

Jo

Jo and I have never traveled together, but I am sure we could as we seem to agree about so many things. I too would drop the Modern Museum, and, if necessary the Whirling Dervish in favor of Buyukada. The last time we were in Istanbul was March and it was bitterly cold the entire month. We did not, therefore, go to Buyukada, but I have been before in October and it is lovely. Like Jo, modern art is not really my thing, and the whirling dervish performance is something they put together for tourists but it is not authentic. It is nice to see, but if I have to watch something on TV rather than see it live, I would opt to see the whirling dervish on TV rather than a tour of Buyukada.

It is wise to be prepared for delays whenever you depend upon public transportation, and those delays are not unique to the ferry from Buyukada. It is easy to blame Turkish systems, but I have not taken a plane anywhere in the US for the last 12 months that either left or arrived on time. Yesterday I heard on CNN that a shuttle flight between Boston and NYC has been late 100% of the time in the last 30 days and yesterday they just cancelled it.

I think you did a wise thing by taking the tour with Insight. They have an outstanding reputation, and when you are pressed for time it is nice to just sit back and let someone else tell you the stories. We used a private guide for our full day in Sultanahmet. It certainly was not necessary, but we appreciated the introduction, and he did get us to the front of the lines and negotiated a terrific meal for us at Konyali in Topkapi. We also used a private guide at Ephesus. There are times when a guide is a good thing.

I understand that you think this will be your only time in Istanbul. We lived in Turkey for a couple of years and always wanted to return. So, we put it on that list of "Things To Do Before We Die", and we gave ourselves a full month to totally explore. All we managed to do was become even more enthralled with all things Turkish and move visits to that country from the first list to the second list "Places We Need To Visit At Lease Once A Year". I am sure that once you have been to Istanbul you will want to return.

If you have any further questions please write. We are anxious for everyone to fall in love with the magic of Istanbul. - BR

Jo and BR - I think I agree with your assessment. I thought the Dervishes might be a tad touristic (especially the performances at Sirkeci) and after having watched a few too many Youtube videos, I think I get it. And I think the Modern has to fall off the list too. So that leaves us a full day for Buyukada and an afternoon and dinner on the Anatolian side (we should get there around 3 in the afternoon).

Thanks again to you both and also to alper and villa and others for helping us plan this trip.