Hande’s Apartment is located in a strategic area that will allow you to comfortably visit all the main landmarks of the city. Both the tram and metro stations are a short walk away.
However there are few things you should consider before choosing this as your Istanbul Home:
1. Stairs: you’ll have to go up a 100 stairs (6 flights) to reach the apartment. If you are not in the physical conditions to do so, don’t stay here. This was not a problem for me but I think it is worth mentioning 😊
2. Noise: the neighborhood hosts a lot of restaurants and clubs. We stayed in the apartment over the weekend and were woken up several times by some loud techno music that started playing at 2AM. I’d recommend to pack some earplugs if you can’t sleep in a noisy environment.
3. Light: the apartment has a very good exposure to sunlight, which is, per se, amazing. However, the curtains in the bedroom don’t block the light at all, so at 6:30 AM your room will be fully bright. If you need total darkness to rest well I would suggest packing some eyeshades!
4. Toiletries: we read on the Airbnb ad that some toiletries (e.g. Shampoo) were provided, but when we arrived we only found some soap. Not a big deal but if we had known we would have brought our own products instead of buying stuff in Istanbul.
Lastly, we had an issue with the water heater. The day we arrived the heater appeared not to be working and the water was ice cold. Hande was however very responsive and helped us solve the problem. We finally got hot water, but shortly after the water heater started leaking and we had to switch it off for the night. Being April and being the nights a bit cold, that represented a problem since we could not use the heating system at night.
We had informed Hande about the situation but nobody was sent to the apartment to check the heater during our stay. I hope this will be fixed permanently in the near future as the leakage seemed to get better in the following days but the issue was not fully resolved.
Overall the place is nice: it has a privileged location and is surrounded by a great variety of shops and restaurants! It however needs some maintenance and some improvements to be a perfect place where to stay!