Istanbul visit in 4 hours.
Thanks to a transit of 21 hours, we decided to spend the night in Istanbul and stroll town for a couple of hours the next day before our flight to Montenegro.
Everything went perfect except for the line at the Turkish immigration.
Our flight landed at 21:30 and we were only able to get out of the airport at 23:40. If we had to get our luggage, that would have taken us another hour.
We barely caught the last train to Sultanahmet as it took us sometime to understand how to actually buy a transportation ticket. So don’t waste time like us and make sure you have smaller bills on you as the card you need to purchase cost 6 Lira and any extra money you put in will be automatically charged to your card. 26 Lira should be enough for a two-way to and from Ataturk airport for one card to be used for two people. If you don’t have change, head to the supermarket on the same floor as the subway to get a chilled bottle water. That should do the trick.
Started the day with a Turkish breaky that most hotels/hostels are known to serve.
10:00am, Off to The Blue Mosque where they lend both men and women appropriate clothing to let you in for a peak view.
The line for Hagia Sofia was quite long and being under a harsh sun we decided to skip it and headed for the Grand Bazaar and the spice Bazaar for some window shopping.
By noon, we were admiring the hungry seagulls that were competing against the fishermen on the famous Galata bridge.
We ended up walking all the way to Taksim square for a bite, before heading to the airport again via subway.
We found out too late that if you’re flying Turkish Airlines, they offer free city tours from airport to airport as long as you have more than 6 hours to “kill”. You might get a chance to try it if you’re flying with any of their star alliance member airlines.