The Bosphorus from your own boat
Your own boat and captain
A boat that is yours for the evening, with its captain, leaving from a quiet jetty rather than the ferry piers.
Istanbul
Water on three sides, a thousand years of appetite, and the right rooftop at the right hour.
By boat when the roads are full. By the side door when the front one has a queue.
- When
- April to June, and September to November.
- Arriving
- Istanbul Airport, or Sabiha Gökçen on the Asian side.
Around your pace, not around opening hours. With your own car and driver, a guide chosen for your interests, and one travel designer from the first call to the flight home.
Private experiences in Istanbul
Arranged privately, inside a journey. All experiences
The old city with a historian, at opening
A historian, not a script
Hagia Sophia as its doors open, before the groups arrive, with a historian who can read the building: the Byzantine mosaics, the Ottoman additions, and what each left of the other.
Turkish coffee, the old way
A table in an old Istanbul house
At a table in an old Istanbul house, coffee as it was made before machines: roasted that morning, ground by hand, brewed slowly in a copper cezve and served with water and a piece of lokum.
Where you might stay
Houses here we know well. Which one is right depends on who is travelling: we choose it with you.
From the journal
Istanbul from the water
Istanbul grew up facing the water, and when the bridges are full it is still the way across. The ferries, the Golden Horn, a boat of your own, and the hour each shore is in the light.
How Istanbul eats
A breakfast that takes the morning, lunch where the tradesmen eat, something sweet in the afternoon and a long meyhane evening of meze, rakı and the month’s fish. The city’s day in meals, and how to order in each.
Downhill from the Grand Bazaar to the Golden Horn
The Grand Bazaar is only the front room: behind it the old trading quarter runs downhill through workshops and the city’s own market to the water. How to walk it, and how to buy a carpet without being sold one.
A journey through Istanbul, made yours.
We will design the rest around you. A travel designer reads every message and replies personally.