In this issue

Sometimes you have to do something simple. In the age of constant challenges, our drive for improvement often makes us forget the important of the basics. While we travel the world, we often do not know what is happening in our own backyard. We attempt to take advanced classes, even if we never mastered the course for beginners.

In this issue we rediscover the simple pleasures of the city. We revisit classic restaurants (something that has been giving us great pleasure recently), rest in hidden gardens, and take a deep breath while crossing Istanbul’s waterways on a ferry. With Aydan Çelik, a devoted cyclist for more than two decades, we explore the difficult paths of the city without getting discouraged. We listen to renowned film critic Atilla Dorsay discuss the roots of Turkish cinema in order to help us understand modern influences in time for this year’s edition of the Istanbul Film Festival.

Although the spring is generally the time to reach out for the new, we hope you will find our “back to basics” theme no less than inspiring. A step back can help us all appreciate what we already know and find the depth within it.

The Guide Istanbul Magazine Description:

The Guide Istanbul, founded in November 1991 and published bimonthly by Apa Uniprint, is an essential guide to the city, offering candid recommendations and expert advice on restaurants and cafés, nightlife, the arts and entertainment scene, as well as design, fashion, touristic sites, and undiscovered places. We are a publication based on the principles of unwavering honesty and an insistence upon quality. Our goal is to simplify choices and make life easier for travelers as well as locals by providing information on select venues and events. All of our writers are locally based and offer insider advice on what to see and do in the city.

The official website of The Guide Istanbul magazine, theguideistanbul.com is a sharp, sophisticated, and trustworthy filter for the city’s happenings, and offers comprehensive listings of restaurants, bars, hotels, and more. The locally sourced information is written and edited by experienced writers who are in the know and dedicated to offering their wisdom impartially. We value quality over quantity and we are selective when it comes to our recommendations: we scour all the corners of Istanbul with a critical eye and recommend only what we rate positively amongst ourselves. The first of its kind, theguideistanbul.com aims to enrich your Istanbul experience and share its wealth of information to bring you the true essence of Istanbul and those gems that might otherwise get overlooked.