Inflation and rent prices make this not a good value for money destination.
Expensive restaurants and there are only so many times you can eat kebab / mixed grill / dips.
I had a stop over and missed my connecting flight due to a 2 hour delay by the first flight.
The wifi in Antalya is even worse than in Istanbul. You need to swipe your passport at a kiosk to get a code for a crappy minimal wifi, medium signal, but crippled bandwidth that web pages don't load. It was unusable on my laptop and I had to rely on my Expedia app on my phone to eventually load enough for me to book a flight out of there.
This was the worst wifi experience I ever remember, even worse than Istanbul and Tbilisi.
The wifi was so terrible that after an hour of struggling to use it I ended up paying €6 for the "High Speed Internet", which was also unusable and kept cutting out.
Istanbul is one big tourist trap.
I am shocked how expensive Istanbul is, triply so arriving from Morocco.
Everybody seems to be out to overcharge you or cheat you as you will see in both the taxis and restaurants sections below:
Taxi drivers are terrible for trying to scam tourists in Istanbul.
One taxi driver quoted me "20 Euros" (not even their local currency) to go literally 1 mile down the road!
Even an official black taxi in London wouldn't charge you that much.
I asked 2 taxi drivers to take me from Gayrettepe to Sultanahmet and they flat out refused in Turkish without speaking English.
I tried the BiTaksi app and it failed to find drivers for me several times, even with tips pre-added. I ended up walking the last mile to my accommodation.
I managed to get a taxi to the airport using BiTaksi when leaving but the taxi driver charged me 1080 lira (£21) on the BiTaxi app and then another 1700 lira (£33) on card in person at the end of the ride, and just after I tapped my card to pay, the app then also charged me (probably because he ended the journey on his app only after this), thereby not only overcharging me but also cheating me by charging me twice. I reached out to BiTaksi several times via in app chats and emails to request a refund for at least one of the double charges but they never responded.
This pretty much sums up the experience in Turkey.
Restaurants will often cost £30 per head without alcohol for mediocre food that would be cheaper even in the UK.
£6 for an orange juice when it was £1.50-£2 in Morocco the week earlier... £2-4 for a water. Meanwhile in the supermarkets a fresh squeezed juice in a bottle is £1.50 or a 500ml water bottle for 10-20p.
The locals says it is because of the rent prices and that Antalya is even more expensive.
It hardly even matters which restaurant you go to, it's like they're all roughly price fixing rather than competing.
Google Maps reviews can't be trusted - almost everywhere seems to have 4.7, 4.8, 4.9, or 5.0 ratings for places that would be 4.1 - 4.3 in the rest of the world.
You follow to a "recommended" place and find it even more overpriced than the others. Either reviews are not factoring in price or there is a lot of fake review inflation in Istanbul.
The airport is, expectedly even worse. £17 for a bolognese that would be £5-8 anywhere else, £20 for a burger etc. The burgers look lowed grade compared to Gourmet Burger Kitchen back home.
I can't honestly recommend many places in Istanbul as I was not impressed, but here are a couple:
- Hafiz Mustafa 1864 - famous dessert shop chain, highly rated for good reason. A few of them are 24 hours with people enjoying socializing there even well past midnight
- Coffee No.4 - the ground pistacchio speciality is amazing, and brewed in a traditional hot sand - a little pricey but I loved it
Wasn't impressed:
- Bistro corner cafe restaurant
- Paradise seafood kebap restaurant
- [Cozy Garden Fish And Meat Restaurant](Cozy Garden Fish And Meat Restaurant)
TODO: