Two continents, one Istanbulkart fare
Destinations › Middle East › Istanbul
Istanbul is the only city where a scheduled commuter ferry crosses between continents and the fare is the same as a bus ride. The famous sights cluster tightly around Sultanahmet, but the food, the bars and most of the actual daily life of the city are over in Kadıköy, Beşiktaş and Karaköy.
Turkish Airlines flies nonstop from Toronto Pearson to Istanbul Airport (IST), roughly nine and a half to ten hours eastbound. From IST the rail link is the M11, officially the Gayrettepe–Istanbul Airport–Halkalı line: east to Gayrettepe for the M2 metro and the Metrobüs, or — since the final section opened on 20 June 2026 — south around to Halkalı, where you change onto Marmaray for Sirkeci and the old city. Havaist airport coaches also run from IST to Taksim and other city hubs, which matters because the M11 is not a 24-hour service. If a connection instead routes you through Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) on the Asian side, the M4 metro serves that airport.
One Istanbulkart covers essentially everything: the M1 through M11 metro lines, the T1 Kabataş–Bağcılar tram that runs past Sultanahmet, Marmaray under the Bosphorus, the Tünel and Taksim–Kabataş funiculars, İETT buses, the Metrobüs busway, and the Şehir Hatları city ferries. Buy the anonymous version from a machine in any station and top it up as you go — cash is not an option on board.
It is a working mosque again, open to visitors outside prayer times; the Byzantine mosaics, including the Deësis, are up in the gallery, which foreign visitors are routed through separately from worshippers.
Four courtyards of Ottoman court machinery, and the Harem is a separate ticket that most people skip and shouldn't.
Eminönü to Üsküdar, or Karaköy to Kadıköy, on your Istanbulkart gives you the same Bosphorus a cruise operator sells you, with tea service.
The Asian side is where Istanbul eats and drinks — the fish market, the meyhanes off Kadife Sokak, and a seafront walk with no tour groups on it.
The historic peninsula — Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapı and the Basilica Cistern all inside a fifteen-minute walk. Stay here for a short trip where you want to walk to everything. The downsides are real: it empties at night, most restaurants are tourist-facing, and it is steep and cobbled in every direction.
Nineteenth-century apartment blocks, İstiklal Caddesi, the bars, the good coffee. Where you stay if you want a city rather than a monument, a few T1 tram stops and a funicular from the old town. Very steep — some Galata streets are effectively staircases — and loud until late, which matters if you're sharing a room with your parents.
Where Istanbulites actually eat and drink: the market streets, fish stalls, tree-lined Moda, and a ferry commute that beats anything in Europe. Cheaper, calmer, more local. The wrong call if your parents won't do a twenty-minute boat crossing twice a day.
Central on the European shore, well served by ferry, metro and funicular, with Dolmabahçe Palace and the Beşiktaş fish market on one side and smart shopping streets on the other. Good middle ground for families — flat-ish near the water, a genuine neighbourhood, and a short tram or ferry hop from the old town.
Not eggs on a plate — a whole table of small dishes: white cheese, olives, honey with clotted kaymak, tomatoes and cucumber, sucuk, menemen, bottomless çay. It's a two-hour weekend institution and a bargain way to feed a large family. Head for the breakfast streets of Beşiktaş, Moda in Kadıköy, and Cihangir.
Adana (hot) and Urfa (mild) minced-lamb skewers, İskender under yoghurt and browned butter, beyti rolled in flatbread, plus lahmacun and pide, which are not pizza and should not be ordered as if they were. Look for ocakbaşı grill houses where you sit around the coals — Kadıköy, Beyoğlu and Kurtuluş are thick with them.
Simit sesame rings from carts everywhere; balık ekmek, the grilled fish sandwich, from the boats at Eminönü under the Galata Bridge; midye dolma, stuffed mussels eaten with lemon and counted by the shell; kokoreç for the brave; roast chestnuts and boza in winter. This is how the city actually eats between meals.
Mısır Çarşısı, the Spice Bazaar at Eminönü, for lokum, pistachios and dried fruit; the Kadıköy market streets for fish, cheese and pickles; the sprawling Wednesday street market in Fatih (Çarşamba Pazarı) for scale. Then baklava, künefe with hot stretchy cheese under syrup, and dondurma — the mastic-and-salep ice cream the vendor will absolutely mess with before handing it over.
Hagia Sophia and then the Blue Mosque, five minutes apart across Sultanahmet Square, with the old Hippodrome running alongside the Blue Mosque. Both are working mosques: shoulders and knees covered, women should carry a scarf, and visitor access closes around prayer times. Be there early or you'll queue in the sun.
Topkapı Palace is next door and eats two to three hours across four courtyards; walk out downhill through Gülhane Park. The Basilica Cistern is back up beside Hagia Sophia — a flight of stone steps down, no lift, and worth it if the knees allow.
Walk down to Eminönü, eat a balık ekmek by the Galata Bridge, then do the Spice Bazaar before it shuts for the evening. T1 tram back up the hill when the legs are finished.
T1 tram to Beyazıt–Kapalıçarşı for the Grand Bazaar; it keeps a weekly closing day, so check before you build a morning around it. Then walk downhill through the Mahmutpaşa hardware and haberdashery streets to Rüstem Pasha Mosque and out at Eminönü. That descent is the best hour in Istanbul and costs nothing.
T1 to Karaköy, climb to Galata Tower or take the Tünel funicular if the hill is too much, then İstiklal Caddesi up to Taksim. Ferry from Karaköy or Eminönü across to Kadıköy for dinner in the market streets, and ride back after dark — the skyline from the water is the whole point.
Morning: Şehir Hatları ferry up the Bosphorus from Eminönü, either the long run to Anadolu Kavağı or hop off at Beşiktaş for Dolmabahçe Palace. Afternoon: Balat and Fener along the Golden Horn for painted houses and Greek and Jewish Istanbul, with Chora (Kariye) Mosque up the hill at Edirnekapı. Golden Horn ferry or taxi in; the lanes are steep once you're there.
Şehir Hatları ferries from Eminönü, Kabataş or Bostancı — roughly an hour and a half from the European side, much less from Bostancı on the Asian side. No private cars on the islands: you walk, cycle or take an electric minibus past the wooden Ottoman mansions up to the monastery hill. Superb in spring and autumn; on summer weekends the entire city is there.
The first Ottoman capital — the Green Mosque, the silk han, thermal baths, and İskender kebab in the town that invented it. Take the İDO fast ferry from Yenikapı across the Marmara to Mudanya and pick up the connecting bus; the ferry is exactly why this works as a day trip instead of a three-hour drive round the bay.
Two and a half to three hours by intercity coach from Istanbul's bus terminals, up near the Greek and Bulgarian borders. Sinan's Selimiye Mosque is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and, most architects will tell you, the finest thing he built — better than anything in Istanbul. A long day with almost no other tourists; worth it if you have four days or more.
Be honest with yourself before booking: Istanbul is hard work if anyone in the group has limited mobility. The historic peninsula is a hill, it is paved in cobbles and worn stone, and the sights are strung along constant up-and-down. The Basilica Cistern is a long flight of stone steps below ground with no lift. Topkapı spreads across four courtyards of uneven ground. Galata's streets are effectively staircases. July and August sit around thirty degrees and humid with no shade in the Sultanahmet squares; winter makes the cobbles slick. What does work in your favour: the modern M-line metros are well built with lifts at most stations, the T1 tram along the historic peninsula runs low-floor vehicles from matched platforms so boarding is level, and it stops at Sultanahmet, Beyazıt–Kapalıçarşı for the Grand Bazaar and Eminönü; Marmaray under the Bosphorus is fully accessible. The ferries are a real pleasure and manageable with a walker — the big piers at Eminönü, Karaköy, Kadıköy, Üsküdar and Beşiktaş have ramped gangways, though they shift with the tide and the boats move as you board. Taxis are small, drivers sometimes refuse short fares, and traffic is brutal: double whatever travel time you estimated. Strollers are fine on the tram, metro and ferries and miserable in Balat, Galata and the bazaar side streets. For kids, though, Istanbul is a win — boats, street cats, simit, and ice-cream sellers who will torment them delightfully. Flights from Pearson are nonstop and under ten hours eastbound, the shortest of these three, and Istanbul is seven hours ahead of Toronto in summer, eight in winter.
Turkish lira (TRY). Cards and contactless work in most shops, restaurants and taxis, but carry cash for markets, street food and small cafés. The lira moves fast, so change money in the city rather than at the airport, and don't buy lira months ahead of the trip. If a card machine offers to charge you in Canadian dollars, decline it and pay in lira — that conversion is never in your favour.
Around ten percent in a sit-down restaurant, in cash, left on the table. In tourist areas check whether 'servis' is already on the bill before adding. Round up taxi fares. Small notes for hotel housekeeping, hamam attendants and barbers. Nobody tips at a simit cart or a çay house, and no one will chase you.
Type C and Type F — the round two-pin European plug — at 230V, 50Hz. Standard EU adapters do the job. Phone and laptop chargers are dual voltage and fine; 110V-only North American hair tools are not and will die on the first use.
Don't drink it. Istanbul's water is treated to standard at the plant, but the distribution network is old and most locals don't drink from the tap either — bottled is sold on every corner and delivered to homes in large jugs. It's perfectly fine for brushing teeth and showering, and ice and salads in normal restaurants are not a problem.
Turkish. English carries you comfortably through Sultanahmet, Beyoğlu and the airports, then drops off sharply in Kadıköy's markets, in Fatih, and on buses. Learn merhaba, teşekkürler and hesap lütfen and people warm up immediately. Menus outside the tourist strip are often Turkish-only, so a phone camera translation app earns its keep.
Busy districts are fine to walk at night, but pickpocketing is common in Sultanahmet, Eminönü, İstiklal and on the packed T1 tram. Two scams to know. First, taxi drivers who say the meter is broken, or swap the note you handed over for a smaller one — use BiTaksi or Uber, insist on the meter, and watch your banknote. Second, the friendly stranger who invites you for a drink and then produces an enormous bill; both Global Affairs Canada and the UK FCDO warn about this by name. Buy your own drinks and never leave them unattended. Global Affairs Canada's overall advice for Türkiye is to exercise a high degree of caution, with stricter regional advisories for the Iraq and Syria border areas that do not touch Istanbul — check travel.gc.ca before booking.
April–May and September–October are the sweet spots: mild, and the ferry deck is pleasant rather than punishing. July and August are hot, humid and heaving. December to February is grey, wet and occasionally snowy, but Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cistern and the bazaars are all indoors and rates drop hard. April brings the tulip planting in Emirgan Park. Ramadan, which shifts each year, fills Sultanahmet Square with nightly iftar crowds — terrific atmosphere, long queues at everything.
Compare the ways to get there, then build a day-by-day plan.
Turkish Airlines flies nonstop from Toronto Pearson to Istanbul Airport (IST), roughly nine and a half to ten hours eastbound. From IST the rail link is the M11, officially the Gayrettepe–Istanbul Airport–Halkalı line: east to Gayrettepe for the M2 metro and the Metrobüs, or — since the final section opened on 20 June 2026 — south around to Halkalı, where you change onto Marmaray for Sirkeci and the old city. Havaist airport coaches also run from IST to Taksim and other city hubs, which matters because the M11 is not a 24-hour service. If a connection instead routes you through Sabiha Gökçen (SAW) on the Asian side, the M4 metro serves that airport.
One Istanbulkart covers essentially everything: the M1 through M11 metro lines, the T1 Kabataş–Bağcılar tram that runs past Sultanahmet, Marmaray under the Bosphorus, the Tünel and Taksim–Kabataş funiculars, İETT buses, the Metrobüs busway, and the Şehir Hatları city ferries. Buy the anonymous version from a machine in any station and top it up as you go — cash is not an option on board.
April–May and September–October are the sweet spots: mild, and the ferry deck is pleasant rather than punishing. July and August are hot, humid and heaving. December to February is grey, wet and occasionally snowy, but Hagia Sophia, the Basilica Cistern and the bazaars are all indoors and rates drop hard. April brings the tulip planting in Emirgan Park. Ramadan, which shifts each year, fills Sultanahmet Square with nightly iftar crowds — terrific atmosphere, long queues at everything.