Buses from Plovdiv, Bulgaria to Istanbul, Turkey
- By
- Aparna Patel
- |
- 20 Jul, 2023
- |
We took a bus operated by Metro from Plovdiv at 22:30 to Istanbul today – arriving in record? time at 5:14.
The border took 1:05h, but we were lucky that our bus was not baggage-checked in detail. Price was 40 leva at 1.95 to the Euro.
Recommendable!
Watch out for the right bus station in the south of Plovdiv (next to the hospital at the roundabout on Bulevard Hristo Botev) where all southbound buses leave from.
From Wikitravel:
Metro Turizm is a Turkish bus company that runs daily bus service to
and from Istanbul in Turkey. Buses going from Plovdiv to Istanbul
depart from Jug Station daily at 11:00, 14:00, 19:00, 22:30, and 1:00.
The trip costs 40 YTL (as of the summer of 2011) and takes roughly 7
hours, depending upon the vagaries of traffic and the border crossing.
Metro buses also depart daily for Bursa, Turkey at 19:00. A second
bus line (Alpar) also has a daily bus from Jug Station to Istanbul
that departs at 22:30.
Because of the potential lengthy border crossing into Turkey the trip can take several additional hours.
The Metro Turizm buses all seem to start in Sofia. The bus station there has a good web site (click in the upper right drop-down box for English).
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According to Seat61.com, you can take the train from Sofia to Istanbul in a sleeping-car, leaving Sofia at 18:55 and arriving Istanbul at 07:50 next morning.
Looking at a Bulgarian rail map, it would seem likely that the train would pass through Plovdiv, so it might be worth going to the station to ask. Otherwise you could always nip up to Sofia for the day, before taking the overnight train from there.
No idea about buses though…
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