The most wonderful tour company. I reached out to them at the last minute during the holidays to…read moretry to book a tour to Cappadocia, Ephesus and Pamukkale. Mustafa Ceviz bent over backwards to arrange everything and even customized the trip to make things work for me. Everything was flawless. The accommodations were more than I expected and all of the experiences were top notch. He even reached out several times during the trip to check in. I would absolutely recommend this company to anyone looking to book an experience in Turkey.

Istanbul Tour Services / Turkey Tour Services is a travel office centrally located in Istanbul,…read morejust 3-5 min walk from the Sultanahmed. They specialize in offering tours to various interesting places all over Tourkey such as Ephesus, Cappadocia, Pamukkale, Gallipoli, Troy. They offer both day tours as well as tour packages. Together with my friends we decided to book a Cappadocia tour with them. Mustafa, who is the owner was super responsive and friendly. He replied to our email within less than an hour and took care of booking our flights, hotel, tours to local attractions as well as a balloon flight over Cappadocia! Everything went super smoothly! The balloon flight was simply AMAZING!! One of the best experiences in my life :) If you are in Turkey, you have to visit Cappadocia!

This was our favorite place to have dinner in Istanbul. We went there the first time after a long…read moreflight from the US they were so nice, the food was very good, location even better. We enjoyed it so much we went back the next night it was even better.

I'll start with WOW and go from there. I've done a few of the free walking tours with the…read moreSandeman's folks and they did a great job in Edinburgh and Prague but they're not in Istanbul so I turned to Yelp and found these folks. Meeting by the Cistern, we walked a solid 20,000 steps (according to my Fitbit) through a half dozen of Istanbul's best known sites including the Topkapı Sarayı, the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome and Hagia Sophia. Along the way, we made several stops and there were a good number of spots where our super tour guide gave us time to explore on our own. When she led us around, she had constant knowledge of the sites and the city of Istanbul and of Turkey. A vast and deep knowledge. I was impressed. Our tour was well organized and well run. The lunch spot was excellent. A couple of tips. - Bring a backpack and a bottle or two of water. - An umbrella is a good idea as the tour runs even if it's raining. - Sunscreen! - Comfortable walking shoes that have a good tread. Istanbul's streets are smooth stone and you don't want to slip and fall. - For the Blue Mosque, you'll be expected to dress appropriately. There are free head coverings. - Extra batteries for your phone/camera. You will take a lot of pictures in six hours! - Pay attention to the meet up spots after the self-exploration. A certain Yelper *cough* Bruce K. *cough* got himself separated from the tour and was nearly stuck on his own until he spotted the green umbrella!

In the past year I've had some pretty fun adventures all over the USA, in China, Korea, Australia,…read moreNew Zealand, Canada, Germany, the UK, Spain, the UAE, and now Istanbul. While I've had a lot of fun in all those places, I can say unequivocally that my Istanbul Classics small group tour with Metin has been the best $90 USD I have ever spent on any activity in any of those places. If you are considering a tour of Istanbul and questioning whether you should do it with Daily Istanbul Tours, with some other tour organizer, or on your own, I can assure you that the best decision will be to book with DIT and be sure to request Metin as your guide. I won't bore you with details of the sites we saw, since you can get all of that information from their website. What I'll do instead is share a little about why this tour ended up being the highlight of our holiday: * It's easy enough to find and get into the sites, but there is so much information out there about them that it's really hard to distill it all into useful material. Metin is an expert on each site and knows exactly what the most interesting and relevant details are; he'll definitely help you make the most of your time at each place you go. Going on our own would be been stupid; we would have wasted hours wandering around, not really knowing what the more significant parts were or what we were looking at, etc. With so little time and so much to see, it was important to use our time efficiently, which we definitely did. * There can be something intimidating about being in a foreign country, especially if you are easily recognizable as a foreigner, don't speak the language, and aren't traveling with a group. Spending a day with Metin lets you truly relax and focus on the amazing sites without having to constantly watch your back or worry about getting screwed (which is a concern in any major city). With Metin, there's no pressure to buy any random crap, no worries about cultural faux-pas, and nobody bothering you at all when they see you are with him. If someone does approach you, he will dispatch them quickly. * Whatever random questions you have, I guarantee Metin will be able to answer them. Want to know what material a wall was built from? Metin knows its chemical composition. Want to know what year a building was constructed? He can tell you when each part of it was created, how long it took, how it was made, who made it, how many times it has been destroyed, where the materials came from, etc. Curious about some Turkish or Islamic history? Metin knows the years, the people, the hows, and the whys. And don't worry about being able to understand him and communicate easily; his English is fantastic, with a slight British accent on some words, which is an extra bonus for us Americans who don't get to hear real English very often * Metin is very personable and took a sincere interest in making sure we had the best possible time in Istanbul. When I mentioned that I really wanted to smoke some narguile, he made sure we were able to get some after our lunch. While we were hanging out at the café, several of his friends happened to be passing by or were around, so he introduced us to all of them and we ended up having some very interesting conversations. We had such a great time on the tour but didn't have any plans later for our last night in Istanbul, so Metin invited us to meet up with them later since they would be hanging out along Istiklal near our hotel. We ended up spending another few hours together that evening and into the early morning hours talking about all sorts of interesting topics, exploring some really fascinating areas that we would otherwise have missed, and meeting more people. This was advertised as a 4 to 6-person small group tour, but due to the season and perhaps people's irrational fears about coming to Turkey, it ended up just being me, my dad, and Metin. This definitely helped contribute to the awesomeness of the experience, but I have no doubt that a group of any size would get great value out of a tour with him as well. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Daily Istanbul Tours and Metin for making our trip to Turkey so memorable.

My husband and I got attacked on a 9 hour Istanbul-Varna night bus by elderly Turkish Bulgarians…read more(Bulgarian Turks?) for having our seats inclined! 2 hours into the trip we got got off on a stop in some village and lots of new passengers got on while we were stretching. By the time we got back to our seats 4or more people started shouting in Turkish and when we sat down an elderly man (70+) started hitting my seat and my head (he missed!) ! Later they switched to Bulgarian, so we understood that they wanted the seats up (strange since they were shorter than me (5'5) and not too overweight, so there was plenty of seats), nonetheless the driver told us (yelled to be precise) to pull up the seats accusing of having no respect for elderly! This all is in Bulgarian, which I don't understand well (I am Russian so I understand some words) and was explained later, no one could speak English of course. It was scary, considering it was during late hours in the middle of nowhere with the entire bus (almost ) looking at you with anger! The incident was brought up to the driver, the manager at a Nisikli location, the boarder patrol and resulted in nothing. I was going to dispute the credit card charges, but the fair was sop low and there was one nice young man working. If you are a blond young female, be sure to bring a bodyguard on that trip!