Basis Travel - Free Walking Tour Istanbul — Local services in Fatih

Possibly one of the worst walking tours I have ever had. The guide was completely unprofessional, not very informative, and overall a complete waste of time. The tour guide spoke like he was a 14-year-old gangster, his explanations were full of "ya know, whateva, yo guys" and so on, and what's more important, his insights/explanations were basically all political rubbish. He tried to convince us that having free health care and free education is bad, compared repetitively how Trump/the US are the new world empire like the Ottomans were (?!), and just carried on with a lot of nonsense. Now, I don't care whether my guide is pro-Trump or not, as long as get some valuable information out of the tour, but I reckon we spent 75% of the time talking about nonsense and only 15% of was interesting/actual history or culture. We mostly walked to random bits of town (which is ok, as I chose the "alternative" route tour on purpose, but I was still expecting to see some nice/interesting parts of town, not just plain boring streets). Overall, a total disaster. This was the first time in my life where I thought that I didn't want to finish the tour (and I should have left earlier!) - if you only have a couple of days in town you don't want to spend 2-3 hours being stuck in something that is not pleasant nor informative.

It is very unfortunate that I don't remember the name of the guide, as I am aware that other guides in the company might be better, but unfortunately I will have to leave a...

I love getting to know a new city by walking it. What better way to experience a new place than to walk through it with someone who knows the culture, people, and places like the back of their hand. Yunus was an excellent guide. He greeted us with a cup of black tea and a yellow umbrella in hand hand, making it easy to spot him. Yunus was funny and an engaging story teller making it easy to share with friends from back home all the fun facts I learned about Istanbul. We had a small group, which was nice to be able to connect with the others. Yunus also spent extra time with us at the end of the tour to recommend local places to eat and shop. He also shared his whatsapp in case we had any other questions/recommendations during our stay in Istanbul. Highly recommend taking a walking tour with Free Walking Tours Istanbul. We also took another one on the Anatolian side - super fun too! Make sure to find the tours through freeistanbultours.com and not through guruwalks.com. Guru Walks gets a commission with every booking they receive through their site. I think the guides should get all of it...

Found this via Google. Our guide was Yunus on the 2.5hr Istanbul city tour. We covered a number of sites and got some good insights into the history of the city.

The 2.5hrs went by really fast and I feel like I could have listened for another 1 or 2 hours since there is so much history here. Highly recommend this as it's good value for a minimum of 400 lira. Not technically free, but it's tip based and fair value for the time.

You can't get exceptionally deep or cover everything because there is so much to talk about but you get a surface level insight.

Yunus was friendly, funny and loud enough to talk to a large group. I felt like he was balanced in his opinions and gave a perspective from both sides on certain topics.

You end the tour optionally by visiting a local shop for some tea and Turkish delights where you get a 20% discount. None of the sales were forced or pushy. We did find this discounted price more competitive than vendors in the Egyptian bazaar when we price checked later.

Yunus also provided good advice for general tips on where to go, what to eat and...