Second Visit to Istanbul: Experiences for Your Return

A second visit to Istanbul is the trip where you stop checking off monuments and start doing things. You have seen Hagia Sophia and walked through the Grand Bazaar. Now you can sit in a barber’s chair, learn tavla in a coffeehouse or fish the Bosphorus from your own boat. Here are the experiences we would pick for your return, sorted by the kind of day you want.

What to Do on a Second Visit to Istanbul

Start with what you enjoyed the first time, then go one step further into it. Did you love the food? Then cook it. Did the old city hold you? Then walk the parts behind the main sights. The ideas below all stay inside Istanbul, and each one fits into a day or less, so you can mix them freely. Every one comes with your own guide, who translates and handles the details.

Learn Something With Your Hands

These are the small, local pleasures that are hard to find without someone beside you. Our Turkish barber experience gives you a hot towel and a straight razor at a neighborhood shop. Our backgammon lesson sits you down with tea in a coffeehouse, where your guide teaches tavla from the first roll.

Sweet tooth? In our baklava or Turkish delight class, you make the tray yourself and then eat it. For a full meal, our Istanbul cooking class starts at the market and ends at the table. Traveling as a couple, you can blend a scent of your own at our perfume workshop. A bride and her friends can hold a kına gecesi with our henna night, with the red veil and the old songs.

Get Out on the Water

This time, stay on the Bosphorus longer. Our Istanbul fishing tour gives you five hours on a private boat with a local captain, and no one needs to have held a rod before. If you would rather stop and walk, our Asian Bosphorus villages tour goes to Çengelköy and Kanlıca. For something slower still, our Bosphorus birdwatching tour follows the autumn migration overhead.

Walk the Istanbul Behind the Monuments

The old city has plenty left once you step past its famous domes. Our Istanbul hans tour takes you into the courtyards of the old merchant inns around the bazaar. Our Sinan mosques tour visits Atik Valide and Zal Mahmud Pasha. Byzantine history continues on our Byzantine churches tour in Fatih.

Do you follow Turkish dramas? Our Turkish TV series tour joins Balat, Kuzguncuk and the mansions of the Bosphorus, and our guide to filming locations shows what you can see at each one. For books rather than screens, there is our literary Istanbul tour.

Spend Your Evenings Like a Local

On your second trip, try a table with music. A meyhane evening brings meze (small dishes shared at the start of a meal) and rakı (an anise-flavored spirit, usually drunk with water and ice), and a fasıl night adds live Turkish music. In season, go and hear a stadium sing on our Istanbul football match tour, where your ticket and fan card are arranged by us.

Then give a day to the Asian side. Our Kadıköy food tour walks the market streets and Moda.

Plan Your Return With Us

Tell us what you saw last time and what you liked most. Then we will build your second visit to Istanbul around it, with one hands-on hour, one day on the water or one long evening, in whatever mix suits you. For the full list of ideas for repeat travelers, see our returning visitor tours. Write to us with your dates, and we will send you a plan.