Pros: wonderful views, clean apartment, safe quiet area, host had provided a large container of filtered water
Cons:
Wasn’t as we were expecting:
1) the photo of the living room shows 4 armchairs, whereas we found there were 2 armchairs and a single bed which was not good for our party of three adults as the single bed was hard to sit on comfortably for any length of time;
Also, 2) there was king size bed in one of the rooms which was right next to the wall with no gap at the side or bottom of the bed. This meant that one of us had to clamber over the other if we needed to use the toilet in the middle of the night.
3) the host had described the apartment as being “very close distance” to “Suleymaniye mosque, Blue mosque, and Hagia Sophia. The reality is these are all on the other side of the Bosphorous Strait, and in order to get to that area you have to walk about ¼ mile to catch the Tünel funicular, then catch the metro. It isn’t difficult and is all part of experiencing Istanbul, but I would say that it wasn’t very accurately described and this aspect might bother some people.
4) I nearly tripped fell down the steep spiral staircase because the one of the lights above the stairs (which are triggered by sensing movement and operate on a timed basis) went off too early for me leaving me in darkness suddenly when I wasn’t expecting it, and it made me misjudge my next step because the spiral stairs are unregulated compared with regular stairs.
5) The description of air conditioning in the apartment is a bit exaggerated as there is only one for the whole apartment and it is not that powerful, so I don’t think it would be able to cool the apartment down much in the summer months.