I stayed at Murat’s place for 5 nights on my own after traveling around Turkey with a tour group for 2 weeks.
Murat is a kind and excellent host; he met me at the elevator in the Syria Passage and lead me up to the 5th floor and up another set of stairs, then down a long passage way, then down another set of stairs to his apartment. His apartment is exactly as pictured in his Airbnb posting.
Unlike some places where I’ve stayed, it’s actually set up to live there. The kitchen is usable. There are kitchen towels and soap to wash dishes etc. There a large water container of safe distilled water so you can refill your bottle from this supply (and not purchase more plastic).
It’s easy to plug in a bunch of electronics at the bedside table. (It’s amazing to me how many hosts neglect to think that travelers usually have at least 2 electronics to recharge at night; often more, so having an outlet easily accessible next to the bed is crucial).
The washing machine’s door was a bit tricky but Murat showed me how to use it and I was able to get several loads done.
Murat was very good about responding to my WhatsApp and Airbnb texts. When my phone was stolen on my second day there, he checked on me every day.
I don’t know if I was there during a particularly noisy time (I think there were football games going on) but it was quite noisy at night. I could hear the partying from the neighborhoods below on most nights until 2:00am.
Also coming back to the apartment at night was often a little scary for me because as I described above, it’s quite a hike through the building to get to Murat’s front door and at night, the lights only come on via motion detection. So I would sometimes be standing in that dark stairwell waving my arms around trying to get the lights to come on before I walked down the long passage way to the back of the building. I was often returning at 11pm-12am. Murat said it was safe and I believe him but I still felt a little spooked coming back to the apartment at night.
Another nice thing about Murat’s place is that you can hear the sound of people playing backgammon at the cafe on the ground floor. I could hear the sound of people “hitting” each other’s token and the sound of rolling dice. It brought back wonderful childhood memories when I used to play with my father.