"Istanbul" a Istanbul Travel Page by AcornMan

It never would have even crossed my mind to visit Istanbul until I bumped into an old friend at a wedding whose husband's family is from Turkey. They had visited Istanbul and spent the entire evening telling me stories about how wonderful it is. In hindsight I'm sure one of the major reasons they found it enjoyable was that my friend's husband is fluent in Turkish and already had a working knowledge of the city. It was a bit tougher for us because we didn't have those advantages, but we managed to make a good trip out of it after a somewhat bumpy start (see my tourist trap warning section).

Istanbul is a city with incredibly rich history, amazingly beautiful historical sites, and other very interesting features. One great thing about Istanbul is that it is very inexpensive, especially now that tourism to that part of the world is down quite dramatically. The food was also absolutely terrific (see my restaurant section for specific recommendations).

In addition to what you find on Virtual Tourist I highly recommend that you visit Tom Brosnahan's excellent web site about Turkey, including Istanbul.