I’m a fair reviewer. Everything was better than I expected. Cleanliness was excellent, the air conditioning worked great, the view is exactly like the photos, the wifi worked relatively fast enough and communication and help was extremely fast and courteous. Findikli tram stop being such a short walk away was especially useful since so many taxi drivers were untrustworthy. Although when we did need a taxi, there was a taxi stand right down the street and one could always use Bitaksi app during less busy times. The bedroom with the bunk bed did not have an air conditioner but with the other three running, the place got cool fairly quickly. And at night in June, we just opened the sliding doors that looked onto the view and we had a sea breeze.
It is true that there is a slight sewage smell from the toilet. I believe it is a sewage issue in older cities that you might find all around Istanbul. I grew up partially in Taipei and my dad bought a luxury apartment in the center of the city. It had the same smell. No matter how much he complained and how many plumbers he had come over, they couldn’t fix it. We just learned to keep the cover closed, the door closed, and use air freshener. I did the same here and all was fine. We barely smelled it after instituting these practices.
There is a very convenient convenience store right across the street run by a nice man and his son and walking to the main shopping street from the apartment takes you through some of the funky, hipster, hippy parts of Taksim which is nice. When we needed to take a taxi every taxi driver understood “Akyol Findikli” and then we just showed him the number 22. So that was nice too. Okan was very kind and our go to guy with a wealth of information and help from finding out where we could get vaccinations for my parents in law to arranging our airport transfer. This was one of the best stays I’ve had with an AirBnB. Truly a gem. Very hard to beat that view. And if you are scared of the heat, the living room air con was like industrial or something. Cooled down a large room in less than a minute. :)