I believe there are visa booths at the airports, just pay and off you go.

I've taken a taxi over there without any hassles other then the driver wasn't sure where he was going and didn't speak a syllable of english. Make sure you have the hotel's address in writing if you need to show it to him. Once the mistake was realized he shut off the meter and turned around, so I think it was an honest mistake.

There are exchange places all over the place, and dollars are fairly freely accepted. Exchange booths were always very full, but there were ATM's all over too. We either used theATM's or gave a $20 bill and took local money as change (we were there when the trate was something like 460,000 ot the dollar, it was just easier for them to round up to 500,000 per dollar, we didn't complain) Because there is such a difference in the denomonitations of the bills you get (the dollar is 1.28 million lira today) pay close watch to the bills you get an give, it's very easy to confuse for example the 1,000,000 notes with the 100,000 lira notes, since some of them are very very worn and difficult to read.