Great weekend and a lot of insights - Guzin was very nice, instructive and gave us plenty of useful details on Sainte Sophie, Blue Mosque (under renovation), Topkapi Palace and Suleiman Mosque. She also showed us good kebab places and carpet and ceramics handcraft. It is less useful to have a guide un the Grand Bazar or the Spice market. It was a great weekend thanks to Guzin and Walks in Istanbul !

As For Her By Name- Guzin - We booked three tours with Walks InIstanbul and our online contact was the owner Arzu, who communicated in a timely and clear fashion. We requested a female guide and were assigned to Guzin, who was an absolutely terrific guide- friendly, charming, knowledgeable, opinionated (when we asked!!) and passionate. Our initial tour was of the original Jewish and Greek neighborhoods that are now in the midst of a pretty aggressive gentrification campaign. We then did a short Bosphorus cruise at dusk, with the highlights being the different sultans' palaces that were scattered along the straits. The following day, we covered the expansive Topkapi Palace that really had a thorough set of billboards to read about everyday life in the palace kitchen. The humongous Hagia Saphia and the equally sprawling Grand Bazaar rounded out that busy day as well. Istanbul is bursting with a colorful and complicated history, and we were grateful that Guzin really provided an unadulterated perspective of the Ottoman interaction with its minorities. We appreciated her candor. Its important to have a solid guide to provide context and and expertise and we were thrilled with Guzin as our choice.