Today I went full tourist on Istanbul. I didn’t really have much of a plan for the day, so after seeing the underground Basilica Cistern I went to Taksim square to see if anything was happening. After arriving and realising nothing of the protest type was going on I went to grab a bite to eat, and as I was coming out of the shop a couple stopped me and gave me a free ticket for the hop on, hop off tour bus.
The ticket was worth a bit of money so not having much planned for the rest of the day I thought I might as well see what these people fork out $50 a pop to these bus companies for. My verdict: $50. Really? WTF people? I am so glad I got my ticket for free, if I had paid $50 for this thing I would be pretty fucking pissed off.
All the bus did was drive you around to the major spots in the city so you can then get off and explore by foot on your own, and then jump back on another bus to continue the tour, jump off at another spot etc. There was a headphone jack that gave you a few sentences about the areas or buildings every few minutes and that was it. I could have done the exact same thing with a combination of public transport and walking and just read about the sites on the plaques, wikipedia or just by asking a local and seen a billion other cool things on the way.
Well now that unplanned experiment is done with remind me never to pay for one of those things. My advice is save your money, take a walk, get lost on public transport and see the far more interesting backstreets, like this one.
