There...and Back Again.

I descend the marble staircase, cross the tiled floor of my hotel’s entrance hall, and head towards the morning air of Sultanahmet, just as the dawn breaks to the east of modern Istanbul.

My hotel is a fine address, some seven stories tall, which stands towards the south-west corner of the Roman Hippodrome. So fierce were ancient contests here that, in 532, rivalries became a riot and destroyed the nearby Church of Holy Wisdom – the Hagia Sophia - reconstructed by Justinian I and, some say, unsurpassed in Turkey for another thousand years.

As the day’s second call to prayer ascends, I’m reminded that I’m sleeping only steps away from another monumental triumph, from which the ancient quarter now takes its name: amid the harmonies of other minarets, the Blue Mosque's haunting wail sails from east to west, across the city, and bounces back again.

I walk north-east, beneath the brightening sky and find myself in gardens between these monuments to Empire: History narrates the endless competition for possession of this city, and the architectural rhetoric rings loud and clear. A city straddling two continents, and gatekeeper of the single waterway that links the Black and Mediterranean seas, the commercial shipping ever-present in the Bosphorus can surely leave the visitor in no doubt why that should be.

Yet mercantile ambitions are not limited to emperors and sultans here: as I walk back towards my hotel, through the ancient no-man’s land, a man with too few teeth gestures to a rusted metal cage, which lies upon the bench beside him: ‘I have a Fortune-Telling Rabbit!’ he declaims, his arms outstretched, as though an orator of old: apparently a Euro is all that stands between enlightenment and ignorance of what my future holds. Yet, for all his supposed talents, said rabbit has yet to master English, so my future - thankfully - remains untold.

Back at my Ottoman residence, the elderly proprietor still oversees the breakfast preparations in the ground floor dining room. ‘Günayadin’ he nods, then stoops to place a platter of fresh sliced tomatoes by an inch-thick wooden board, upon which stand soft white, and hard pale yellow cheeses, flatbreads and sweet Turkish cakes, next to bowls of yoghurt, walnuts, olives and dried apricots.

I write my travel journal as I eat and plan the next stage of my journey south...to St. Paul’s Ephesus.