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Nearly every person I know who I confess my love of Istanbul to agrees: there’s something magical about this city on the Bosphorus. Lazy writers would say it’s because it’s a place where East meets West – where Europe and Asia make eyes at each other over nothing more than a simple river. Others would say it’s the way that empires have bumped up against each other over millennia, creating a rich patchwork of tradition and architecture. Or perhaps some would say Istanbul has an invincible feel to it, built atop the bones of Constantinople. For me, though, my love for Istanbul rests in the little things. It’s the way that the locals care for the street cats as if they were their own, even going so far as to build them houses to protect them from freezing in the harsh Turkish winter. It’s the way that the minarets reach for the sky, stretching against the domes that silhouette black against the horizon as the sun sets. It’s the dance of h...

When someone tells you that something is “hidden,” usually all it does is make you want to find it. That was exactly the case when I read about Urban Adventures' “Hidden Istanbul” walking tour for the first time. What were the “hidden” parts, I wondered? And how could I discover them? And so, on my first morning in Istanbul — roughly an hour after getting off an overnight bus from Bulgaria, in fact — I set off to uncover those “hidden” things about this diverse and history-filled city. The “Istanbul Uncovered” tour The tour (now known as the “Istanbul Uncovered” tour) kicked off at 8:30 a.m. in the Sultanahmet neighborhood of Istanbul, not far from the famous Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque. This tour, my guide Suleyman told me, would introduce me to some of Istanbul's most-loved sites and best-kept secrets — but we would start with the best-loved sites. Our first stop was the site of the Hippod...