I stayed at Elvan and Fatma's extraordinarily charming apartment for a month and loved every minute of it.

In addition to the extremely caring, friendly and responsive hostesses, the apartment itself is incredibly bright and furnished with terrific vintage flair. It feels like a real home with tons of character, but also, with all those windows, open views and wooden walls and ceilings, like a boat on top of a mountain -- a truly unique experience.

The location is perfect if you want to be near everything but not in the middle of everything. The building is unrenovated and could use a lick of paint, but perfectly safe. As for comments suggesting that Tarlabasi is an iffy neighborhood, first of all you are just around the corner from Tarlabasi Bulvari, in other words at the very edge of it and steps from Istiklal Caddesi, and second of all, please bear in mind that with all the tourist rentals, Erasmus students and gentrification projects in the neighborhood, we are much more of a threat to the local residents than they could ever be to us!

I would go back in a heartbeat, both for the apartment and the super kind hostesses.