Istanbul! Constantinople! (How many people sang me that song before I flew to Turkey?!)

It was amazing. Just so different to the rest of Europe, and yet eerily similar in many ways. My feelings towards the city reminded me of how I felt when I first went back to a post-Communist Moscow, where everything is European, only slightly not.

But I am running away with myself! Let's begin at the beginning...

So I arrive at Munich airport and get to the check-in desk, and the woman asks me whether I have my visa. "Visa?" I ask. "Oh shit!" It just hadn't occurred to me that I would need a visa to enter another European country. But then again, Turkey is European, only slightly not. Thankfully you can get your visa in Istanbul airport, but the whole visa thing threw me a bit.

I arrived, and found myself surrounded by hoardes of Spaniards. It seemed the whole of Spain had decided to go on holiday at the same time as me. But the freaky thing was, I couldn't really tell the Turks from the Spaniards until I heard them talk. Okay, they were dressed differently too, but dark-skinned Mediterranean types have a certain uniformity of appearance to a fair-skinned northern European like myself.

I was met at the gate by a guy with my name on a board. The hotel offered a free pick-up service which I was only too glad to accept, what with this being a new city for me in a country where I don't speak the language - and that always annoys me! - and where I really wasn't sure about how easy it was to take public transport. (As it turns out of course, there's a perfectly adequate train connection. But hey.)

My driver spoke no English, and just a few words of German, and my Turkish is utterly negligible, so it was quite a quiet ride into town. I concentrated on looking out of the window and observing Istanbul. It reminded me a lot of Spain - not just for all the Spaniards, but also architecturally. But it also reminded me a bit of Melbourne's St Kilda district.

Perhaps it was just the fact that I was abroad again that made me think of lots of different places. Or the sudden warmth (compared to Munich) and the thickness of the air, both with sea-level oxygen and with metropolitan pollutants.

The road we took from the airport skirts the sea, and I got to see dozens of ships at anchor or queueing up to sail through the Bosphorus, all against the backdrop of a hazy sunset. Asia was almost indiscernible through the smog that lay over the scene like a crumpled-up dirty grey net curtain dropped from heaven's window. But hey! I could see another continent!!

We turned off the main road and wound our way through tiny mediaeval streets into the heart of the Sultanahmet area of town, home not only to backpacker hostels and my hotel but also to two of Istanbul's gems: the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia church/mosque/museum. My hotel looks out over the Blue Mosque, and my what a mosque it is! It was even more impressive than the wedding-cake mosques of Brunei, and its many minarets and domes were spotlit to perfection in the gloaming.

I had to wait until tomorrow to catch up with Hugh, who was on his way from Damascus to meet me, so I was an independent traveller again, for the first time really since my trip up to Cairns over a year ago in Queensland. I settled on my iron-frame bed, threw open the window to let in some of the suddenly cool evening air, and avidly read chunks of my newly-purchased Lonely Planet guide to Istanbul. What to do? Where to start?

Eventually I plucked up the courage to head out into the unknown. I walked slowly past the Blue Mosque and its diminutive neighbours, two needles plundered from Egypt in the style of the Place de la Concorde, then walked through the gardens that lie between the main road and the Hagia Sophia, that jewel of 6th century architecture that is quite simply incredible. But more about that later.

I headed to one of the Cheap Eat recommendations in Lonely Planet, and soon discovered that it's a place that lives off its recommendation in Lonely Planet rather than any semblance of quality. Ah well. It's right in the middle of a way touristy area of town as well, so I spent the evening dodging carpet salesman and ever-so-friendly Turks.

I must have had "Arrived Today" written in six-foot-high letters on my forehead! And the trouble is, I can't be nasty, so I found myself wriggling out of conversations wtih people who said I looked Australian, I looked Turkish, or who just wanted to know the time. Yeah, right! Or maybe they really were simply being nice. But I couldn't afford to trust their intentions.

I ended my first evening by wandering down to the waterfront of the Golden Horn (ah! such resonant names!) and strolling past scores of grilled fish salesman and dodgy dudes selling fake designer bags/shoes/shirts, then rewarding my long walk with a beer in a bar that at least looked like it catered more to locals than tourists. The Efes lager was surprisingly tasty; a little sweet, but certainly welcome after pounding the pavements for a couple of hours.

And thence back up the hill to the Blue Mosque, and to my hotel, and to bed.