 | Istanbul Bosphorus River Reviews | Tips 1 - 10 of 110 |  |
 | |  |  | Bosphorus River: Cruise the Bosphorus | Tip Rating:   |  |  | |  |
First of all, despite the category heading, the Bosphorus is NOT A RIVER! It is a sea, connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, separating Asia and Europe. SEA, not river, got it?! Good...now, if you walk along by the ferry terminals in Eminonu, no doubt someone will approach you to persuade you to take a Bosphorus cruise. Sounds nice, but what they don't tell you is that their tour cruises only go as far as the first bridge and dump you back on dry land a couple of hours later. instead, look for the pier marked Bogaz Hatti (Bogaz is Turkish name Bosphorus), which is the local ferry stopping almost everywhere along both European and Asian coasts, finally reaching the small village of Anadolu Kavagi. There might not be loud music, garbled commentary and false merriment on these boats, but you will see a lot more and save a few lira to boot! Leaving Eminonu, your first stop is commercial Besiktas, where some tourists opt to join the boat. Passing the impressive beautiful-ugly Dolmabahce Palace, the Swissotel Ciragan Palace and the trendy village of Ortakoy, you soon reach the first bridge. The boat pushes further on without stopping, so you can only admire Arnavutkoy, swanky Bebek and the two fortresses of Rumeli Hisari and Anadolu Hisari from afar, passing under the second bridge to pull into Kanlica on the Asian side. Famous for its yoghurt, a couple of sellers climb onboard to sell you pots of the stuff. Next stop is upmarket Yenikoy, home to a number of European consulates during the summer months. On to Sariyer, quite a conservative sort of place famous for its fish restaurants, and Rumeli Kavagi, a tiny village with a couple of beaches nearby. If this is your first time, I suggest continuing to Anadolu Kavagi, where you can spend a couple of hours waiting for the next ferry back. You can get off at any of the previous stops, but then that ruins your return ticket for some reason, and you'll have to take a bus back to Eminonu. Use the cruise to get an idea of what you want to visit later on. Leave a Comment Directions: The Bosphorus divides istanbul in two...you can't really miss it!
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| | | | Bosphorus River: Bosphorus Cruise part 1 | Tip Rating: | | | | |
If the throngs of tourists and merchants in Istanbul wear you down, one great way to escape for a while and still see a lot of very interesting sights is to take a cruise up the Bosphorus. The best way is to take the state-owned Turkish Maritime Lines (TDI) boats that depart from Eminonu. The boat takes you up the Bosphorus toward the Black Sea, allowing you to see all the interesting structures along this historic waterway (see photos below). It makes six stops during the journey including a great one at Anadolu Kavagi on the Asian side, where it stops for several hours, allowing passengers to explore the area, get a meal, and relax. A couple warnings about the cruise: First, you will be offered orange juice as you board the boat by neatly dressed attendants. They fail to mention that, after you finish your drink, they'll be around to collect a very high charge for the juice. This angered us substantially, but after our other experiences in Istanbul I suppose we should have known better. The other annoyance on the cruise was that the attendants spend every single second of the trip walking back and forth on the decks trying to sell everything imaginable, from various kinds of food, to postcards and even Izod sweaters at one point. Once you get used to just ignoring these people the trip becomes more enjoyable. The only reason I didn't include the Bosphorus cruise in the "must-see" category is that you can visit nearly all the sites we saw along the shore from land, thus getting a much better view of them than we did. However, the cruise was a very enriching experience and made our trip to Istanubl an overall much better time after our rocky start. I definitely highly recommend taking this cruise. Leave a Comment Directions: Boats depart several times during the day from Eminonu, the busy port on the north shore of the Bazaar Quarter, just west of Seraglio Point.
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