Cycling Out Of Istanbul – Easier Than You Might Think

To be honest, I was a little nervous about cycling out of Istanbul. I mean, the city is seriously big! The drivers are aggressive! And there are no real bicycle paths to speak of. I was sure that it would take several hours for me to exit Europe’s largest city on my bicycle.

The truth, however, was that it was really rather simple and it only took me one hour and twenty minutes to cycle from my rented apartment in Istanbul’s European district to the park on the eastern end of the city where the traffic essentially comes to an end.

I was going to take a ferry boat from Be??kta? to Sariyer for the super low price of just three Turkish Lira, but I missed the boat (twice! doh!), so I finally just jumped on my bike and started riding. To my surprise, getting out of Istanbul was not nearly as difficult as I had thought it would be and frankly, I wish I had spent more time cycling around Istanbul while I was there.

This is the route I took on September 1, 2012 while cycling out of Istanbul, Turkey.