We had a great time staying in Miko's place in Istanbul. The apartment was very clean and located in a nice, neighborhood-y part of Istanbul (we were so happy to be staying away from the touristy areas of Sultanahmet and Galata. The best parts about the apartment were the beautiful view of the Bosphorus from the top terrace (yes, there are two terraces!), the comfortable bed in the cozy attic bedroom, and having a fully kitchen. There are quite a number of stairs up to the apartment, but if you walk around Beyoglu like we did, the stairs to the apartment will seem easy compared to the streets of the city. We appreciated the internet/wifi in the apartment, as well as the Istanbul guidebooks left by other travelers. Miko also had many really nice suggestions from dinner and things to see, which we really liked and used a lot.
My only complaint is that we had a really hard time with both checking in and checking out. The checking in problem was mostly due to not having a phone which could work in Turkey. We were asked to call a friend of Miko's when we arrived to the airport, but we were not able to get a local SIM to work. Ultimately, I was able to call through the post office at the airport, and reached the friend after multiple tries. Once we arrived to the flat however, there was no marking on the doorbells to know which apartment it was, and (again) we had no phone to call, and the front main door was locked even though the directions we received from Miko said it would be open and that one should just push hard. We waited outside the apartment for about 20 minutes before the friend heard the bell and came to let us in. The moral of the story is that you should bring a phone that will work in Turkey if you are coming from the US as most American phones will not work. On check out, we were asked by Miko to check out earlier than the original time agreed (by 9:30 or 10 instead of 12 noon) b/c the next tenants had already been promised to arrive early. Miko kindly offered to leave our luggage at his own apartment, which was nice, but we declined in order to keep things a bit easier with less taxi rides. We found a luggage storage at Taksim square, so it was fine. But, it would have been nice to have the full time on our last morning at the flat to not rush as we packed up.
Overall, our stay was nice, and had check-in and check-out been smoother this apartment would be a slam dunk.