Questions about 25 hr layover in Istanbul
 

In June 2014 we will be arriving IST from LAX at 5:10pm and leaving the next day at 6:15pm for a flight to Tanzania (all on Turkish Airlines). We will want to spend the night and do some exploring the next day. I have read that it can take anywhere from 35min. to 2 hrs to get from airport to the city. When we arrive at 5:10pm and go through immigration/customs, etc. will that be rush hour? Would it be better to just spend the night closer to the airport and get into the city in the morning (say leaving around 8/8:30am) or would that just be rush hour at that time? What would be the best plan to avoid the most traffic - want to maximize our time to sleep and our time to explore the next day.

Also, while normally I would be looking for something a bit more quaint and authentic would be fine for this one night with a larger hotel - priority will be getting a good night's rest on good beds!!

We visited Istanbul a few weeks ago. Our flight arrived at 1:30 pm on a Sunday afternoon. The drive in from the airport took about 1 hour. The line to get through immigration took almost 2 hours, horrible wait.
The booths were only 1/3 staffed and the agents were very slow.
Be sure to purchase and print your visa online before you go. The line to purchase a visa was very long the day we were there.

On our departure day it took almost an hour to go through immigration and security. Be sure to allow enough time.

If you want to take advantage of your time to see what you can of Istanbul, I can't see any reason to stay near the airport.

Get into the city as soon as you can, check into your hotel, roam around for a while and have dinner in whatever order suits your needs, crash, have breakfast and then spend as much time as you can in stunning Istanbul before you need to head to the airport. Once there, figure out how you will get back to see more of this astonishingly wonderful city.

I was very pleased with the Hotel Sapphire. Don't know if it would serve your needs.
http://www.hotelsapphire.com

Enjoy!

We were in Turkey earlier this month and just breezed through immigration on arrival, we'd got our visas online earlier, but from what I hear quite often there are long lines. Rush hour should be over by the time you get out, book yourself in a hotel in the Sultanahmet area, should take about an hour. This way you'll hit the ground running the next morning. We stayed at the Uyan Hotel, extremely comfortable, we're going back there again next year. http://www.uyanhotel.com

About 2 years ago we also spent just over 24 hours in Istanbul. This is what I wrote at the time:

ISTANBUL HOTEL. When looking for a hotel in Istanbul we were looking for clean and comfortable, and located near the main sights (Sultanahmet) to maximise our limited time there. We settled on The Basileus Hotel (http://www.basileushotel.com/index.php ). We stayed in a Superior Room and the girls had a standard twin room. Both rooms were spotless and tastefully furnished; ours had a small balcony and looked down into a courtyard, while the girls had a ground floor room with a high, narrow window without a view. We found the location to be excellent – very quiet, yet an easy walk to the main sights. We also used the transfer options provided by the hotel, which made arrival and departure very easy for us – 4 people travelling with baggage often meant it was difficult using a single taxi, so transfers were important to us. The front desk staff were always extremely helpful, always ready with a smile and a chat! They made useful suggestions of what we could see and do with our limited time, and were more than happy to suggest a range of restaurants nearby when we asked. We felt the hotel was excellent value for money and we will definitely stay there again when we return to Istanbul!

I would also suggest heading into Istanbul. We thoroughly enjoyed wandering the area near our hotel our first night there. Seeing the Blue Mosque lit at night was stunning.