A ticket between two continents: Istanbul from a city ferry

The city ferry from Eminönü to Kadıköy crosses from Europe to Asia in about twenty minutes and costs €1.16 on an Istanbulkart. For that you see from outside everything the old city charges you to enter — and only from the water do you see how it all fits together.

GuideIstanbul from the start — what first?Istanbul →

On day one Istanbul is usually seen from the inside, at foreign-visitor prices: the Hagia Sophia gallery €25, Topkapı with the Harem €49, the Galata Tower €30. After a day like that you know what the dome looks like from below, but not where it stands in relation to everything else. The old city is a peninsula and the imperial mosques sit on its hills; you can't see that from the street, and from the boat you see it in a minute.

Heading for Kadıköy, sit on the right. The boat leaves the Golden Horn and rounds Sarayburnu point, so Topkapı, Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque stay to your right, with the Süleymaniye behind, on the hill above Eminönü. Karaköy and Galata are on the left, and ahead lie Üsküdar and Kadıköy — Asia. On the way back it reverses: the old city is on your left, coming towards you. This isn't a tour boat but a city line, so the people around you read, doze and drink tea and look at none of it.

If you want more of the Bosphorus, the same city company runs a long tour up to Anadolu Kavağı; the foreign-visitor return ticket is €11, twice the local price. The regular line to Kadıköy has no foreigner fare — you pay with an Istanbulkart, as on the tram.

3 daysThe long Bosphorus tour, with departure times:Istanbul in 3 days →

Head back before sunset, but check the month first. From the Kadıköy shore the old city lies to the north-west: the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, the Süleymaniye and Topkapı sit between 290 and 303 degrees on the compass. From early May to mid-August the sun sets right there, so on the way back the city stands as a silhouette against the sky. In October it sets some thirty degrees further left, over the Sea of Marmara, and in December about sixty: the city is lit from the side, and you only get the silhouette once the floodlights come on at the mosques.