Poor first impressions.
Very disappointing stay.
Unfortunately, our first impressions arriving at this apartment really dampened our stay in Istanbul.
We arrived at 10pm. We struggled to find the place. The stairs next to the entry were crowded with at least 40 people smoking and drinking. We then had to try to find a shop across the road to retrieve a key from a shopkeeper that speaks no English. We were not informed the room number, so we had to go back to the shop on a busy Saturday night, and queue behind drunk Russians to find out this information. Luckily, a customer was able help to translate to the shopkeeper, so that we could call Lysia.
Once we got into the room, we found one of the windows was open and unable to close. This was really stressful, as it was so noisy. We did try to ring Lysia again from ours and a strangers phone, but there was no answer. We also tried to text, but there was no reply. Lysia did manage to get the handyman to find the window ready for our 3rd night.
What makes matters worse, we were not given the WiFi code, so we couldn’t communicate with her easily. We ended up going to Starbucks (30 mins walk) to use their internet to communicate with Lysia. Once we got the code, we were disappointed to find the internet speed in the apartment is diabolical (0.2mb).
If you’re looking for partying, it’s a great area to be in, but this wasn’t for us. Very noisy until 4am on Saturday nights.
The apartment has a good view, and is very well decorated, but it is a bit misleading. The pictures of the view are from the rooftop. This rooftop itself is very worn down, the furniture is broken.
These things would have made the experience much better-
- arrival information
- a simple welcome pack
- fixing the tv (didn’t work)
- fixing the WiFi speed
- WiFi password displayed in apartment
- new pillows (literally they are ready for the bin)
- new mattress (it is dipped from the amount of use). We woke up with a very bad back each morning.
- room number on the door key
Very disappointing trip. We would not recommend this apartment to anyone.