Ancient Town Hotel

The hosts were helpful and pleasant. Breakfast was very simple but satisfying (boiled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, some sort of cut meat, one sort of cheese, two kinds of cereals, milk, one juice, tea and instant coffee). The location is wonderful, 5 minutes' walk away from the hippodrome in Sultanahmed (where the main attractions are) and 2 minutes' walk from Little Ayasofia and the sea. In light of the pluses and minuses of the property, you really need to consider cost vs. location vs. comfort and figure out what is more important to you. For us, location and cost was of utmost importance, so we adapted to the level of comfort offered.

The hotel is obviously old and without any new investments at least in the last 3 decades, i'd say. We experienced 2 of the rooms and each had something broken (a door, or a window, or the bidet plumbing). The walls are very thin. The windows are not sound-proof, so your sleep depends on the neighbor's mood to turn on loud music at 2 a.m. or not. People yell outside at all hours without any thought to the fact that the entire neighborhood is basically all hotels - but the good part is that the street is somehow behind the main thoroughfare so there is almost no traffic, and not many people pass through except other tourists and hotel staff. We found very very few people who spoke English but enough to get basic directions. The hosts' English is not really that great but enough to give some basic advice about where to exchange money ("Sultanahmed bad, grand bazaar good").