Plan Turkey Train Travel: Istanbul → Eskişehir → İzmir (With Tips & Traps)

After spending 3 days in Istanbul, it’s time to head to the next destination - Izmir, an old city of Turkey, from where we would visit a UNESCO site - Pamukkale. You can fly from Istanbul to Izmir, but as mentioned in How I Planned My Turkey Trip: From Big Picture to Daily Moves, I’d ask myself “will I have a chance to see other parts of the country while traveling?” Keeping that question in mind, I ended up taking a train and followed this route: Istanbul → Eskisehir → Izmir.

Table of Contents

• Eskisehir 10-hour Itinerary

  • Actual Route Diagram

• Tips for Logistic

• My experience

  • 1. Yosun Cafe

Eskisehir 10-hour Itinerary

Since this is a transfer city, I didn’t plan anything specific to do in Eskisehir. All we did is walking around and exploring. Here are the places that we ended up going:

Actual Route Diagram

Tips for Logistic

Here’s the train route recommended:

• Pre-travel: Downtown Istanbul → Istanbul Söğütlüçeşme (Marmaray)

• A. Istanbul → Eskisehir (YHT, High Speed Railway)

• B. Eskisehir → Izmir (overnight train)

which looks simple, but actually has some hidden traps. So I’d want to share some tips with you!

1. 🚊 When choosing the departure station in Istanbul, choose Istanbul Söğütlüçeşme (Asian side). There are 2 departure stations in Istanbul that you can take a train to Eskisehir: Istanbul Söğütlüçeşme (Asian side) & Istanbul Halkalı (European side). Choose the Asian one because it's closer to downtown (≈30 min vs. 50 min).

2. 🚊 Leave earlier for catching the Marmaray train to the departure station. Because the departure station isn’t located right in the downtown Istanbul, you’ll need to take a Marmaray train first. (We boarded at Marmaray Sirkeci Metro)The Marmaray platform is very deep - expect about a 10-minute walk from street level. Definitely leave extra time; we missed our train because of this. 🥲

3. 👮🏼 Get to the train station 30 minutes earlier. For most of the public transportation - airport, train (not Marmaray), people are required to get their luggage scanned. That’s why we saw locals getting there much earlier than the departure time, and lining up for the security check.

    

4. 🧳 Deposit your luggage at Eskisehir train station. When you exit, look at your right side. You will find a luggage storage that allows you to pay with credit cards.

5. 🤖 Ask AI route ideas. The route Istanbul → Eskisehir → Izmir was actually recommended by AI. It told me that there’s a train at around 23:00 in Eskisehir, and from there I can take an overnight train to Izmir, which sounds so perfect to me because for a 12 hour train like this, I’d usually prefer an overnight train that feels quicker.

6. 🎟️ Buy e-train tickets from the Official site here

My experience

The vibe in Eskisehir feels younger maybe because there are some universities around there. I also feel like it’s more chill than Istanbul - people would just sit by the streets and chat. Overall it’s quite nice to walk around the city but I wouldn’t recommend getting to the city too early since there are not many things to see.

We woke up at 6:30 in Istanbul, took a 3 hour train to Eskisehir, arrived around 13:00 and stayed there for 12 hours (because the 23:00 train to Izmir is delayed 🥲) There’s a point that I felt really tired, so we just found a cafe to sit until the departure time approached. Thinking back, if we took a train that arrived around 19:00, the whole experience would definitely be better.

1. Yosun Cafe

For the places I visited in Eskişehir, I didn’t have any strong opinions, except for Yosun Cafe! We were looking for lunch options, but didn’t feel like eating pizza, hamburgers (they usually don’t provide veggie options:/) Luckily we found Yosun Cafe in a cute mall! The food is good, the owner is friendly and their cat is adorable! Highly recommend if you are looking for a cozy cafe with veggie options!