A short journey to Asia

Our walk through Istanbul started with the foremost objective of reaching the Bosphorus Bridge from our apartment in Sultanahmet, the old quarter of the city, and crossing into Asia from Europe.

Completed in 1973, the bridge is sometimes called the first bridge because a second, the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, was completed in 1988.

My wife Leonie and I had no time frame and little idea of what we'd see along the way, just an optimistic approach and a tourist map which featured some of the major postcard attractions, most of which we had already visited.

Off we went, up our narrow cobblestone street with its raised, narrow footpath, heading towards the historical quarter which houses the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace - mandatory tourist stops around the Hippodrome, a huge rectangle of open space which was the sporting and social centre of the Byzantine capital, Constantinople.

Past an eclectic range of small businesses: butchers, barbers, bakers, fruit-and-vegetable stalls, cafes with the menus drawn on billboards, souvenir shops, travel agencies and rooms with clear cafe blinds where concerned-looking men played cards and backgammon. Some shop owners stood in their doorways, catching the morning sun while sipping apple tea from small hourglass cups.

Some Turkish coffee is so strong it could have been dredged from the Bosphorus - so strong that sleep becomes irrelevant - but the Turks also love tea, especially apple tea, which comes in the form of a powder with a lethal amount of sugar. It's sweet and sour and quite delicious and addictive.

Often, along the street at the front of our hotel, tea-sellers pushing carts with big brass samovars of tea could be seen wheeling off to their street corners.

For the most part, the shopkeepers were of a surly countenance but the one word Leonie and I had down pat was "merhaba", which loosely means hello, and often it drew wide grins from the men in the doorways.

As we ambled through the historical precinct down towards the Bosphorus and our first destination, the Galata Bridge over the Golden Horn, it was impossible to avoid the hawkers, with the carpet-sellers delivering the premier pick-up lines.

One young Turk, probably in his late 20s and well-dressed, started flipping through the pictures on his iPhone screen when he learned we were Australian, as frantic as though he had Mohammed's phone number.

It wasn't but it was just as fanciful. He was pictured with Julia Gillard in 2011, and beamed as he told us his mother made the scarf the former prime minister was wearing. Not only that, her partner Tim Mathieson bought two of his carpets and had them shipped back to the family home in Altona, Melbourne.

As we reached the walkway along the Bosphorus and mounted the steps on to the Galata Bridge, the fishermen came into view. Hundreds of them.

At the northern end of the Bosphorus lies the Black Sea and at the other the Sea of Marmara, both mighty waterways which provide a great variety of seafood. On the bridge the fish taken seemed to be similar to our yellowtail, which was just fine for the hearty souls who spend countless hours in this select community, talking, contemplating and fantasising as anglers do the world over - and, of course, sipping tea, which is sold for one Turkish lira by the man with the big pot and paper cups.

As a lover of seafood I was delighted to stumble on a small fish market where the catch glistened in the soft light of the morning. Some nice-sized fish were among the catch from both the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, as well as the Bosphorus, where clusters of small fishing boats often bob around as huge oil tankers glide by.

It was an unusually warm day for February, so we took the opportunity to sample a cup of pomegranate juice from one of the hundreds of street vendors who crush the fruit in their juicers. Magnificent.

Refreshed, we picked up our pace and soon strode past Istanbul Modern, a celebrated art gallery which we visited later, and then a rainbow-painted stairway which we learned had been decorated by local retiree Huseyin Cetinel, who wanted to add some life to the drab, grey stairs. Following complaints and erroneous claims that it was a gay pride statement, the local municipality had repainted the stairs but later caved to protest and the rainbow colours reappeared.

We found our way back on to the footpath along the water but the steel towers of the Bosphorus Bridge appeared a walk too far. Fortuitously - as we learnt later, the bridge has no pedestrian access anyway - we decided to get to Asia by taking one of the many ferries that scoot back and forth across the waterway.

For a princely sum of three Turkish lira ($1.50), we were soon in Uskudar on the Asian continent, sat with the locals in a flame-grilled chicken place and had a meal for a pittance in a small arcade before working out which ferry to catch back to Sultanahmet.

Fifteen minutes later we were back in Europe, walking home past rows of chic jewellery shops, sweet stores with Turkish delights as big as footballs in the window and along the outer reaches of the Grand Bazaar.

Throughout the day, we played our trump card "merhaba" probably 15 times, and I gave one last recital to a man standing on the steps outside his small restaurant, near to our apartment.

Mostly, the Turks appeared to enjoy a little fun with the Aussie visitors vandalising their language. He smiled as I delivered the greeting at 5pm after a long day; so too did I at his "good morning".