My fiance, two friends and I all stayed in Miko's apartment in Taksim. The apartment is super colorful, cute and kitschy. It's just a couple blocks from several great restaurants and bars and less than 10 minutes from the shopping street leading up to the square.

The beds are nice, if not a bit hard. The bathroom is weird but cool and works great, although the shower had a tendency to randomly fluctuate in temperature. The porch on the roof is super sketchy but we all went up there anyhow and had a great view. Plus you can hear all of the calls to prayer reverberating across the city. Super cool experience.

Only a few downsides. I'm not sure how safe the place is. The banisters, roof and porch have probably seen better days. The water tastes bad but is apparently healthy. And the lock going into the building seems secure but the one going into the individual apartment is quite ancient. We also had this weird problem where we had to leave for a couple of hours Friday morning due to some ministry inspection or something? Not quite sure what was up with that, but we complied and it was fine.

Also, while we were there, it was about 28 degrees C but there are plenty of windows and the apartment managed to stay pretty cool.