Istanbul Airport is a beautifully laid out building with clear signage and grand opening spaces. I’ve already mentioned that the wi-fi didn’t work, but I won’t continue to dwell on that.
The public transport signage, I was fortunate to have Jonathan to guide me through the options.
This is the covered outside area, it reminded me of Heathrow T5. It’s about a ten minute walk to get from the arrivals area of the airport to the metro lines.
I was hoping that the transportation system would be contactless, but it was more like London’s outgoing Oyster system. However, there were enough machines and the process was relatively painless and inexpensive.
We needed to take two metro trains to get to the city centre, this is the platform at the airport where we ready for our first journey.
We were heading to Gayrettepe Yonu station when we were transferring to a second line.
A photo of the metro train as we departed it, it had been much busier than that during the journey.
Changing trains at Gayrettepe Yonu, our first journey had taken around 45 minutes as the new airport is located a fair way out.
There was a bit of a walk, but we meandered up and down lots of stairs and corridors to another line which dates to the early 1990s. There’s a charge every time you change lines, but it’s all clear and works well.
There is wi-fi on some of the network for locals, but it doesn’t work on UK phones. I hardly complained about this to Jonathan.
The second train heading towards the Vezneciler-Istanbul University metro stop which is where we were getting off. This was a shorter journey of around twenty minutes.
And at around midnight, we arrived into the heart of Istanbul with just a twenty minute walk to the hotel. It was a little later than we would have liked, but we knew that the hotel had a 24-hour reception and it was good to be properly in Turkey for my first time (or Jonathan’s about 20th visit).