Blue Guide Istanbul, Fifth Edition (Blue Guides) [Paperback]

John Freely (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 5 edition (July 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393320146
• ISBN-13: 978-0393320145
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,394,528 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most accurate and detailed guidebook, February 25, 2002

By 

cookbook critic (Foodville, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blue Guide Istanbul, Fifth Edition (Blue Guides) (Paperback)

We used this book on our trip to Istanbul last week, and it was I was intimidated at first by all the historic detail, but I found this book better than any guide you could hire to navigate through millenia of history on the shores of the Bosphorus. It walks you through the sites, and gives the historic context for each. Very informative.

It has a nice list of sites not to be missed in the front, in case your trip is brief, as was ours.

I will always travel with this brand of book in the future. They recruit actual scholars of the area to do much of the writing.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Heavy stuff, October 31, 2003

By 

D. P. Birkett (Suffern, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blue Guide Istanbul, Fifth Edition (Blue Guides) (Paperback)

This is the detailed guide for someone with a fairly long stay in Istanbul and a serious interest in art and history. Compared with the Lonely Planet Istanbul it's not as readable and has less practical "how to get there" and "where to stay" information but it's usful once you're in a particular building and want to know more about it. Sometimes it tells you more than you want to know but it seldom tells less.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not up to the usual Blue Guide standard, June 8, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Blue Guide Istanbul, Fifth Edition (Blue Guides) (Paperback)

In general, one can trust the Blue Guide series to be accurate, precise and informative; this guide to Istanbul, one the other hand, is a disgrace to the series: I have just returned from a short trip having noted over twenty mistakes (about two a day!). These mistakes range from incorrect phone numbers for hotel and restaurants (at least three, but still excusable) to missing hotels, to unscholarly, opinionated blather about how Turks are choosing to develop their city (utterly inexcusable from an author with Freely's scholarly pretensions). In short, avoid this book!