I stayed here for a month and I loved it.
The Location:
Having never been to Istanbul, I was wary of this location because I thought it might be a tourist desert without local life & be noisy near the train station. Both worries evaporated immediately upon getting here. Yes, most of Sultanahmet caters to tourists but they (we!) haven’t erased local culture even here. There is no noise from the train station & almost no vehicular traffic in this quiet corner at the terminus of two streets. Even a Turkish friend who grew up in Istanbul remarked on how quiet it is. I still always recommend ear plugs for sleeping, which I use everywhere I stay. Transportation access is excellent here. Istanbul has beautiful modern street cars & you can walk 5 minutes to either Gulhane stop or Sirkeci Station stop, with Eminönü beyond that. The train station serves the new Marmaray commuter train line; the cars are beautiful & brand new & will take you across to Uskudar on the Asian side & beyond. Ferries a short 10 minute walk from the apartment take you down the Bosphorus and across to the Asian side. The water front here is so lively that I loved hanging out & just watching all the boats & people. One can also walk from the apartment over the Galata Bridge to the Galata Tower easily within 30 minutes. I felt more secure wandering around Istanbul than I would in many American cities. Hagia Sophia is a 5-10 minute walk away. There is a police station across the street but I never heard siren noise and Gulhane Park, a wonderful oasis, is your back yard. Above that is Topkapi Palace complex.
The Apartment
The apartment is exactly as seen in photographs; the decor is a nondescript generic hotel interior but everything is clean & works well. Unlike everywhere else in Europe, I was able to take a nice hot shower without worrying about losing the hot water at any minute. There’s a small refrigerator & a little kitchenette. You can’t prepare hot foods here, as there’s no microwave or stove but there’s a sink & some utensils for preparing breakfast & snacks. We had a heat wave in May, so I used the air conditioner. It got the room cool enough for me to sleep & I’m very sensitive to temperature at night; if the room is too warm I can’t sleep. I didn’t have any problem here. Entering & leaving the apartment works easily, no keys, just a code to punch on a touch pad to enter into the building & the same to enter the apartment itself.
The Host
Derya was friendly when he met me upon my arrival, showed me the apartment & then took me on a quick tour of the neighborhood to show me restaurants to eat at. They were all excellent & very cheap with the current exchange rate (6 lira to 1 US dollar when I was there). Derya always answered my messages promptly. The cleaning ladies were both nice, too.
Random Tourist advice
Be aware that Turkey apparently blocks the functioning of Google Maps. You can’t zoom in and get street views, it just blurs everything out. This happened even though I had a VPN, so if you rely on that to plan your trip, I would do it all before you leave home.
Buy a transportation card, Istanbulkart, which is cheap & indispensable. Look online for instructions on how to purchase and add value to a card, which can be done at any station. It’s good on ferries, trains & buses.
There are several places nearby to get Turk Cell service & SIM card. Do your research before going, look for the best price, write it down & tell the guy at the store that's the price you want. The guy at the place I went to admitted that if I hadn't come in with the price of 220 turkish lira that I wanted for a month of data-heavy service, he would have charged me 300. We laughed about it. People here are sharp dealers but I also experienced generosity with some taking less money than the actual bill when that's all the money I had. Just watch out for people trying to drag you somewhere to buy stuff; they're everywhere.
Topkapi Palace: take toilet paper with you. There are only 2 restrooms in the entire complex; both at opposite ends of the arcade that encloses the right side of the courtyard between the first two gates. The one near the second gate is mobbed; the men’s room had no toilet paper, soap or hand towels when I visited. I tried to tell workers there of the situation but nobody remotely cares or takes responsibility. Luckily a guard told me of the other bathroom that has almost no signage; it’s just to the right of the security turnstiles when you first enter the complex. Even here my stall ran out of toilet paper but there were 4 stalls & hardly anyone using them.
Best place to shop for groceries in the neighborhood: Migros Jet; walk to & through the train station, take a right to the corner & cross the street, walk half a block & take next left onto Mimar Kemalettin Cad., Migros Jet is on the right a few doors down. To quench your thirst, try the Exotic brand of Meyer lemonade & orange juice in the cold section; both were excellent & a different brand of boxed 100% cherry/apple juice on the shelf was really good. Süzme is the Turkish strained yogurt & it’s delicious. If you want milk, süt in Turkish, don’t buy ayran by mistake; it looks like milk but it’s a salty sour yogurt product that tastes terrible on corn flakes.