Istanbul Welcome Card

I'm impressed how easy it was to find pick up points, how welcoming were all the guides and how exiting were the stories they told us.

Our tour guide Hakan was awesome! The service was great, the balance of guided tours excellent for the price we paid. The best information packet and cards were delivered on time and gave ample instructions on redemption. Smooth, simple and god value! Will highly recommend to friends

The Welcome Card we took from Headout was most helpful. The guided tours were really good. Our guide, Mr. Hakan was really nice and would explain everything in details and answer all our questions. The card had free rides on all public transport and also entries to a lot of places so we didn't have to stand in queues anywhere. It also included, hop on hop off Bosphorus Cruise. I highly recommend to buy this card before visiting Istanbul.

Easy process to meet up. Just enough information provided in a light hearted way from the guide (Jan) to give a good feel for the place before allowing us to tour the palace at our leisure

We had an audioguide for the Basilica and the palace but were not able to use it in the basilica for there is no mobile network connection there. That is of course a shame when one downloads an audioguide in advance and pays for it. In the palace, however, the live guide was very good and knowledgeable. The tickets really were skip-the-line which worked very well.

I liked the knowledge of the guide and his relaxed way of explaining the historical data and the specific sites of the tour. I did not like the initial mess and the change of the tour start time.

The Skip the line feature was a great idea. As a solo traveler it is not fun to stand in line alone and wait. I will gladly pay to not stand around in endless lines. There was a bit of confusion about the meetup point. I made it to the designated meet up point in plenty of time for the 10am tour. But then was told my Palace tour meet up point was at a different location. Then was told after my palace tour to return to the initial point at noon for my cistern tour. While on the palace tour, the guide urged us to explore the palace for a few hours after the tour ended . I asked him how I could do that and still make the cistern tour at noon. He told me I could go to 2 or 4 pm tours instead. That was a relief to hear. But if I had been told about the 2 and 4 pm tour options for the cistern I would have been more informed planning my day.

The guide was very knowledgeable and explained things well. My hotel was around the corner from the meeting place so that made it easy to find it.