Roasted chestnuts as a snack. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec Photos © Slawomira Kozieniec First there is the smoke from a distance. Coming closer to the source of the smoke you smell something that reminds you of barbecue. But this is different. It is roasted as meat, but in a more gentle way. ‘Kestane kebab’ (roasted chestnuts) shouts the street vendor. With a small metal grip he is putting the warm sweet chestnuts one by one next to each other. With love for his produce and love for aesthetics he puts them in a nice shape. Before he puts the fruit on the warm area of his cart he scores them wi ..read more

By foodie Wendy Serter ROOF 16 – SWISS HOTEL ROOFTOP (only open in summer season) Swiss Hotel The Bosphorus, 16th floor. Tel: 0212-326 11 00 Most fabulous view of Istanbul. All food are culinary art. Great cocktails. Vibrant atmosphere with live DJ. One of the best places to spend your nights in Istanbul. 2. KISS THE FROG (Brasserie/Restaurant/Cafe) Yahya Kemal Caddesi No. 4, Rumeli Hisari, Istanbul. Tel: 0212-287 73 20 Lovely restaurant, with nice seafood specialities. 3. KARAKÖY LOKANTASI (Mehyane) Kemankes Karamustafapasa Mahallesi, Kemankes Caddesi No. 37A, Karaköy. Tel: 0212-292 44 55 Fam ..read more

You want to know where the taxi closest to you is, but don’t see one anywhere? Curious where the growing number of street art is? Or you just want to know what Turkish words you should use? Here are several of the most useful apps in Istanbul. http://www.seslisozluk.net/ Dictionary https://bitaksi.com/ For taxis http://www.streetart-istanbul.com/ Street art More about these apps and other ones in the magazine The Guide Istanbul. http://www.theguideistanbul.com/news/view/1675/the-five-best-istanbul-apps ..read more

Reading and speaking Turkish is easy: all words are written and pronounced phonetically. Even if you don’t know what the words mean, you can still pronounce them without any mistake, after learning the pronunciation of the letters. I will teach you in 15 minutes! Until 1928, Ottoman Turkish – the language of the educated few (5 percent) – was written in the Arabic script, which was inadequate to convey sounds in Turkish. Thanks to the reforms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first President of Turkey, the Latin alphabet was introduced and the Arabic script was outlawed from public life. To know h ..read more

Underground railway Tunel. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec Istanbul was the second city in Europe – after London – that had an underground rapid transit system constructed. When it opened in 1874 it got the name “The Metropolitan Railway of Constantinople From Galata to Pera”. It is an impressive name for the shortest ‘metro line’ in the world: it has only one stop! It isn’t a real metro. It is a funicular, is a cable railway in which a cable attached to a pair of tram-like vehicles on rails moves them up and down a steep slope; the ascending and descending vehicles counterbalance each other. Alt ..read more

Swimming pool at hotel Sultania Lots of tourists want to relax in a swimming pool after a busy and tiring day of sight-seeing in Istanbul. So which hotels are equipped with a swimming pool? I found several in the touristic heart of Istanbul, in the district Sultanahmet with the Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi palace, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Hippodrome, Basilica Cistern en much more. Here is my list of recommended hotels with a swimming pool. Do you know any other good ones or do you want to share your experiences about them, leave your reaction here. Thanks. Enjoy! http://www.hotelsul ..read more

Kadıköy, an old, laid-back cosmopolitan and residential neighborhood with curving streets on Istanbul’s Asian shore, has grown enormously in popularity in recent years. It is the cultural heart of the Asian side of Istanbul and definitely the hippest place to stay, eat, drink and hang out. This hood should be on everyone’s travel bucket list right now. There are dozens of new bars, hipster cafes, restaurants, design studios, shops, and tattoo studios. It is the hotspot of the alternative youth culture and of XXL murals of Turkish and foreign graffiti artists. It has a more relaxed atmosphere t ..read more

Main gate of Topkapı Palace. Photo: Slawomira Kozieniec Topkapı Palace is the oldest and also the most Ottoman of all Turkish palaces. It is different from palaces in the rest of Europe. It reminds you of a tent camp of nomads built of stone, as the palace is not a single large structure like Buckingham Palace or Versailles, but a collection of relatively small kiosks and pavilions surrounded by beautiful gardens. One of the buildings was the ‘Harem’ (‘forbidden’ in Arabic), a labyrinth of corridors and rooms, where the family of the sultan lived and where the foreign women, who were bought ..read more

One of the many charms of Istanbul is that you still find lots of street vendors, also called hawkers, everywhere. They sell all kinds of merchandise or provide services like shining your shoes. It reminds me of my youth in the south of the Netherlands where I saw them selling sweets, or shoe shine, or sharpening knives and scissors. Here in Istanbul they sell for instance Simit, a circular bread, typically encrusted with sesame seeds, balloons, flags, eggs, and in Autumn also quince. I bought 1.5 kilo of these beautiful quince and prepared some delicious quince compote ..read more

Visitors, who come to the Museum of Innocence to see the tragic love story of Füsun and Kemal, to remember and cherish the memory of a lost city, and also to ‘console themselves by the things’, will be able to hear the story of the Museum from the voice of Orhan Pamuk himself with audio guides. Orhan Pamuk’s ‘Museum of Innocence’ opened the 27th of April 2012, four years after the release of the novel The Museum of Innocence in 2008. Visitors who bring their book and had it stamped in the last chapter can visit the museum for free. Füsun’s earrings and Kemal’s broken heart along with the poste ..read more