Istanbul Tourist Trap Tips by AcornMan

Kumkapi is the seafood restaurant district located to the southwest of Sultanahmet, just off Kennedy Caddesi and the main railway loop. I read a lot about this historic area in tour guides, but it was a huge disappointment. Our first mistake was to walk to Kumkapi from our hotel in Sultanahmet, which took us through a confusing maze of streets in a run-down, dirty, and somewhat frightening residential area. We made it safely, but I certainly wouldn't do it after dark.

Once we got to Kumkapi itself we found a vast sea (ha, ha) of seafood restaurants all offereing almost exactly the same menu, with almost no uniqueness. None of the food looked particularly appetizing anywhere we looked, and it was all very overpriced. We didn't receive very good service and we found poeple to be less friendly than in the two restaurants I mentioned in my restaurant section. To top things off, when we took a cab ride back to our hotel our driver took us to the wrong part of town completely, despite the fact that I showed him the address of our hotel and the precise location on a map. He then acted annoyed when we informe him that he took us to the wrong place.

Our trip to Kumkapi was our first meal in Istanbul, and one of our first experiences in the city. Needless to say, it was not the right way to kick off our trip, and it was during this experience that my wife and I began to seriously second-guess our decision to visit Istanbul. Fortunately things did get better as our trip progressed, but Kumkapi certainly didn't endear us to the city.

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At Least Do This: Just don't go. Period.
Alternative: There are lots of great places to eat, two of which I cited in my restaurant recommendations. When in doubt, ask someone at your hotel. Hopefully they're as helpful as Mustafa at our hotel.

This isn't a specific location, but rather a kind of person you will encounter hundreds of times as you walk around Istanbul. They are the incredibly pushy, aggressive, and pesky salesmen, merchants, and tour guides. Of these, the first two groups can be brushed off easily enough because you can simply smile, say "no thank you," and briskly walk past their stores. They can't follow you because they have to stay and watch their stores. It can be a bit like running the gaunlet when you have to endure an entire street of these guys, but at least there's an end in sight.

However, this limitation does not apply to the countless "tour guides" roaming around, particularly in the Hippodrome/Blue Mosque area. These are the truly pesky men who will literally follow you trying to make conversation, when all they really want is to take you on a "tour" that ends up at a shop of one kind or another. Or they are would-be tour guides who are hoping you'll hire them for a personal guided tour of the city.

We were constantly hounded by these annoying men every time we stepped foot near the Hippodrome area (i.e. every day, several times a day). If you stop walking for even a moment it's all over. You'll never get away because they'll never stop talking. After learning this reality, and after our polite attempts to get away failed us time after time, I'm afraid my wife and I both resorted to being fairly short and rude with them. Sadly, we found that the best thing to do was to simply avoid making eye contact, always keep walking, and just dismiss them with a quick "no thank you" anytime one of them even hinted that he wanted to talk to us.

I know that sounds horribly rude, and perhaps people will criticize me for behaving this way, but I swear to you that I'm not normally like that at all and that I love meeting and mingling with locals when I travel. But this was just another world, and drastic measures were necessary. If you know a better way to handle situations like this, by all means please post a comment and tell me.

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At Least Do This: Don't stop to talk to these people, just smile and say "no thank you" and keep right on going. This is especially important for women traveling without a male companion. ALL the salesmen in Istanbul are, well, men. And they do not take "no" for an answer from the women they pester. We witnessed two young women get harassed (not sexually though) for nearly an hour while attending an event at the Blue Mosque one night. I came very close to just standing up and telling these guys to get the hell away from them, but with my luck they'd pull a knife on me and that would put a quick end to my vacation. These poor women told the men time after time, very explicitly, to leave them alone to no avail. I really felt sorry for them, so when the same group of men approached me and my wife afterwards, I told them to take a hike immediately.
Alternative: One thing we noticed is that these pests are apparently not allowed to harass tourists inside the walls of the mosques, palaces, and other historic buildings. When one particularly persistent guy followed us into the courtyard of the Blue Mosque after we made it clear that we weren't interested in talking to him, a security guard chased him off and immediately became our hero.

We also noticed that we never once got approached by anyone while we were in Gulhane Park. This made the peaceful, tranquil, and relaxing atmoshphere of this beautiful park even more enjoyable, and we sought sanctuary there more than once.