Amida House

Let me start by advising all the future tenants in Amida house (or Istanbul in general) not to accept airport transfer offers from your hosts. They will charge you approximately 700TRL or more. Instead, just book an Uber/BiTaksi from the airport (costs between 390-410 TRL) or take the new metro (after it opens). The host of Amida House offered us the taxi for 700TRL and we declined when we found that Uber was cheaper. Pros: Host is quite responsive. The place was quite clean. Regular housekeeping. Great location. Amazing bed and pillows (personal preference). Free coffee and tea made available at a nearby hotel. Cons/things to consider: 1. The stove provided by the host is great maybe if you just want to fry some egg. But when I tried to see if it was capable of making pasta, it could not even boil water. It cuts off automatically before the boiling point of water, which I found quite useless. The owner insisted that the water was boiling. To support his claim, he boiled some water in a kettle and poured it into the pot I had on the stove and took a video as proof. As expected, the bubbling of boiling water soon stopped in the pot and continued to stay warm but never boiling. He told me that his house has the same stove or something like that. I don't see how that is relevant to my experience in an apartment I booked based on what was advertised (misleadingly advertised). 2. The Internet was terrible and I could not even use it to stream a Full HD Youtube video properly nor could I make video calls. The host claimed it was due to some internet trouble in the whole region. Maybe it was, but the issue persisted for the entire two-week duration of our stay. The WiFi network strength (not internet availability) was strong near the entrance of the apartment but bad in the bed. WiFi kept disconnecting and reconnecting. I believe it is an issue with the network devices in the apartment and has nothing to do with internet availability in the region. 3. The host cannot take criticism. It is evident in his response to my review in Airbnb. He kept stating that my behaviour was "ugly" and that I was disrespectful. He complained that I kept him from something by reporting that the service he advertised in Airbnb was not working as it should. I would suggest anyone interested to stay here to read that review and my response. Verdict: If you plan to cook on your own or expect stable internet during your stay, I wouldn't recommend this place. However, it is a great place to stay if you do not plan to cook on your own and can get by with poor WiFi strength in the bed and occasional internet disruptions. It is close to the sea and to Sultanahmet square. And please use Uber or BiTaksi if you plan to take a taxi to/from the airport. During our stay, we had a great time apart from the two issues mentioned. Once we realised that cooking in the apartment is not an option we found cheap places to eat around Istanbul and tweaked our routine accordingly. About the internet, you can browse webpages quite fine or even download files relatively fast. The issue we experienced was only with streaming and video calls.

The location is nice and the people seem okay. We were constantly dealing with issues such as appliances not working or no hot water. Hot water will be shut off for the whole day except for a little while in the morning - but only after informing them. And their reason is that there is a quota but it behooves someone to question what the quota is when the hot water is used for such a short period of time. The area is a bit expensive so the apartment is reasonably priced for the most part but noone should have to compromise on the basics. We had to stay with cold water for the whole day and boil water to live in the apartment. No apologies from their end and issues still remain (we have to inform them again and again). The hot water will get fixed but perhaps for a few minutes before you have to tell them again and wait for the next day. If there weren't so many delays to fix things and so many recurring issues, the place would have been alright - given the area. Maybe, just maybe that will change in the near future. So far, the issues while staying here really impacted our stay in Istanbul negatively.