Three days in Istanbul: a short-visit plan

Dolmabahce Palace before noon, the Bosphorus cruise in the late afternoon. After landing, Galata Tower and the Karakoy side are walkable. This is the most productive day of the three because it shows the city from both land and water.

Give the third day to shopping and free time: Nisantasi or a mall, with an afternoon to rest. On a three-day visit we deliberately leave out trips beyond the city (Bursa, Sapanca) — the road tires you both ways and takes from Istanbul itself. Out-of-town days belong to programmes of five days or more.

Five days is the floor for seeing Istanbul without hurrying. Adding two days to the three-day skeleton makes room for a breathing day — the Princes' Islands or Emirgan — and a shopping day; you see two places a day instead of three and the evenings stay free.

Seven days allows one day trip out of Istanbul. The three most chosen are Bursa (two hours by ferry), Sapanca and Maşukiye (an hour and a half), and Şile and Ağva. One day trip enriches a week; two leave Istanbul unfinished.

Ten days means two cities. The classic combination is four or five days in Istanbul, then five in Antalya, Bodrum or Trabzon on a domestic flight. Because the two regions are opposites, the trip does not go flat. Splitting those ten days between two cities almost always beats spreading them over one.

Fifteen or twenty days carries three regions: Istanbul plus a coast plus the Black Sea, say. But a warning belongs here — every change of city spends a day on the road. Three cities means two moving days; a family that does not write that into the plan spends a third of the holiday with the luggage.

The first is overfilling the day. The distance between two points in Istanbul looks short on the map, but traffic and walking time are added to it. A plan with four major sights in one day works on paper and not on the ground; at the end of it nothing has been properly seen. Two main stops a day plus one spare is the right measure for three days.

The second is counting the arrival and departure days as full days. For a guest whose plane lands at midday, the first day is really a half; settling into the hotel, resting a little and walking the nearby streets in the evening is enough. The departure day is the same — because you must be at the airport three hours before the flight, that day carries only breakfast and a short walk. A three-night trip is in practice two full days.

The third is not checking closing days. Some museums close one day a week, and mosques close to visitors at prayer times, for longer at Friday midday. Looking up the closing day of the places you want before building the plan is a whole day saved by a single check.