Very mixed feelings from me about the trip in general and Istanbul in particular.
The flight out from Edinburgh was fine but arriving at the airport, there was confusion about how to get the rather long journey to central Istanbul. I received a text from UEFA that there would be free buses provided and we went in search of them. There was total chaos despite a very large number of UEFA badged helpers. None seemed to have a clue exactly where the buses were going to. It eventually dawned that they going to two random hotels. That was not much use in a city twice the size of London.
We eventually went back into the airport and found the metro line. The trains were only every half hour so we were waiting 25 minutes before one left. This was on top of the 45 minutes trying to find a free bus. We had to buy a ‘Oyster Card’ type pass to travel. The airport metro took us to to a place well away from the centre and we had to leave the station walk for another ten minutes to find the metro station to continue. Two more metro journeys and a bus ride took us to our hotel. It was around 8:00 pm before we arrived at our hotel.
The hotel was excellent but it was quite late when we arrived and had a snack and a drink. We found the nearest metro station was about 20 minutes walk from the hotel and went back into town. We were issued with travel cards by UEFA valid for the Saturday and Sunday. The QR code failed to work at the metro stations and the staff had never heard of them and had to use the travel card, purchased on Friday, which still had credit on it. By the time we got to the city centre the staff did allow us through using the e-card.
The fan zone was a bit of a shambles so we went to Taksim Square and had a few drinks and a snack. At around 6:00 pm, we set off for the fan zone to get the buses to the stadium. The Inter supporters were supposed to use the metro which didn’t go that close to the stadium and the City fans were to use the shuttle buses .
The shuttle buses turned out to be airport style buses with most standing. That was no joke for a trip though rush hour traffic that lasted one hour 50 fifty minutes. We eventually arrive in the vicinity of the stadium at around 20:00 still two hours from the start to be confronted with a message that the bars in the stadium can zone were now closed.
Dehydrated after such a long bus ride standing, we went to our seats. My son then left to try and get something to drink and to eat. He was queuing for and hour and a half before he arrived with some iced tea and a sausage type sandwich.
Then came the match and the trophy presentations. We set off to get back to the city at around 15 minutes past midnight. We eventually located a shuttle bus again packed to the rafters. It took a hour and three quarters to get out of the car park. Eventually we arrived back in town jumping off before the end and had to get a metro train. We boarded one but it didn’t depart for some twenty minutes. That involved more standing and eventually a short and very cheap taxi ride back to the hotel. By then it was 4:00 am.
I was dreading the trip back to the airport the next day with a twenty minute walk and probably three different metro trains. However we spotted online that an airport bus was running from near our hotel. A five minute taxi ride and a luxurious bus ride of around 50 minutes took us direct to the terminal building.
Istanbul is a very interesting city. However it is totally unsuited to holding a major football final given the remoteness of the stadium and poor (non existent?) transportation links to there.
The taxi drivers were quoting 100 to 150 Euros for a ride to the stadium and some people ended up getting out and walking because of the horrendous traffic congestion.
