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Istanbul is one of the world's great cities with a population of ?????. It also has an amazingly diverse history thanks to its role as centre of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.

We arrived in the afternoon, thanking our lucky stars that we had not even contemplated hiring a car. Put it this way, driving in Istanbul is a skill we would rather leave to the locals as the traffic regularly comes to a horn-honking standstill and, when it moves, it is composed of many doorhandle-to-doorhandle stand-offs.

After settling in, walking up the hill to the park between the Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque was a magnificent introduction to Istanbul. As the sun went down, the mosques around the city began their amplified call to prayer.

As the sun went down the floodlighting came turned the Blue Mosque into a glorious floodlit colour. During the summer, starting in May there is a son-et-lumiere display. It was one of those travel experiences that will stick with you forever - standing between a 1,400-year-old place of worship and one of the world's greatest mosques dating from 1616.

We stayed right in the heart of the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul in the Best Western Acropol Hotel, just a few hundred yards from sights like the Aya Sofya (or Haghia Sophia) and the Blue Mosque.

Typical of Istanbul the staff are extremely friendly and obliging. It is certainly a recommended base, but with one or two caveats. The rooms at the front face onto one of the main streets of tourist bars, so you will have music, laughter and car horns outside until the small hours. The air conditioning in our room was totally ineffective, so – even in April – we had to have the window open to try to get a little bit cool.

You will also be woken by the call to prayer in the early morning. If this bothers, rather than excites, you, take earplugs!

The final caveat is that the hotel claims to have wi-fi internet access, but our room on the third (American third, not British third) the wi-fi did not work throughout our visit. The solution was to take the lap-top to the restaurant on the street where it worked fine.

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Blackpool? As the guide on the open top bus confirmed, that is what Dublin means in Gaelic - black pool. But, unlike its namesake on the other side of the Irish Sea, Dublin has a very cosmopolitan atmosphere.
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On a clear day, Zermatt is all about the Matterhorn. But, on the day we arrived in this famously car-free town, where enclosed golf buggy taxis hum around the streets, the Matterhorn was teasing. It's head was stubbornly stuck in the clouds. We joked about our "room with Matterhorn view", but still it was not to be seen. Read More...

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