Ruhi is an excellent host! I stayed with him for over a week and I would be happy to stay with him again. He is very communicative, thoughtful and friendly. He expresses a genuine interest in his guests, and he even cooked me a delicious Turkish breakfast and offered to make me coffee every time we met. I felt very comfortable and at-home during my stay. The apartment building is centrally located in a quiet neighborhood at the base of a hill. There's plenty of local shops and restaurants to explore there, and if you take the stairway up, it leads straight to one of Istanbul's main pedestrian boulevards Istiklal. The location doesn't get much better than this.