On a bumpy one-hour flight from Athens to Istanbul, I overcame my fear of flying - temporarily, at least. Exhaustion can be a wonderful salve for anxiety. When I finally boarded the plane, I was so drunk with sleep deprivation that I could have cared less if we had plummetted into the Bosphorus on attempting to land. As the plane sped down the runway, its tail end slaloming erratically, I dozed off, waking only when we hit heavy turbulence over the Sea of Marmara, by which time we were close to our destination.

Istanbul must rank as one of my better airport experiences. I had expected to find officials dawdling over my visa application, an interminable wait for my backpack at baggage collection and - worst of all - a melee of hustlers and touts on emerging into the arrivals lounge. None of these materialised, and before I could say Sultanahmet, I was cruising towards Istanbul's old town in a very comfortable airport shuttle bus.

The outskirts of Istanbul were an incongruous blend of the old and the new. Box-shaped homes of crumbling concrete lined one side of the highway, but poking through this ugly façade the odd minaret or church spire promised that some architectural gems were buried beneath the rubbish dump of construction. To my right, the Sea of Marmara was slate black in the weak daylight. Weather is not a plus point in Istanbul at this time of year. The sky looked like a waterlogged ashtray, the dark clouds great sodden lumps of burnt tobacco that drizzled on to the streets intermittently.

I disembarked at Aksaray and walked the half mile from there to my hostel in Sultanahmet. The broad, car-clogged streets thinned like the tributaries of a river, trickling into the complex of mosques, museums and market stalls that gazed across the Bosphorus at Asia. Shoeshine boys jogged alongside me, pointing to my boots and waving mud-caked toothbrushes under my nose. Frail city elders with long white beards and Islamic skullcaps stroked worry beads with trembling fingers, their brows furrowed in concentration as if they were puzzling some philosophical quandary. Young Turkish men garbed in the latest designer jackets flashed curious looks in my direction as they marched briskly past. One approached me to ask where I was going.

"I'm looking for the Paris Hostel," I replied.
"The Paris Hostel? I think you have gone too far, my friend. Come, I will show you the way."

I followed him down a cobbled side street, past a jewellery store and kebab vendor, the familiar elephant's leg of meat turning behind the window.

"Where are you from, my friend?"
"England - London."

"Ah, England. Now in Turkey we have few English. Since the bomb, people don't come here. But you are welcome. My name is Ido. What is yours?"

I introduced myself as we climbed the steps outside the entrance to my hostel. Ido bade me farewell and presented me with a business card. "If you want to buy carpet, my shop is very close."

The hotel manager had misplaced the details of my reservation, but there were plenty of vacant rooms regardless. I was offered a glass of apple tea while one was cleaned, and soon found myself chatting to the hotel staff about Tugay Kerimoglu, the Blackburn Rovers midfielder.

"Not so good now, I think," smiled the manager's brother, a pint-sized teenager with a mop of greasy black hair that flopped over the corners of his mouth. "Maybe your team not so good because of Tugay."

I couldn't have agreed with him more.

"But Graham Sounness is a good manager, no?" interjected the hostel manager. "He manage Galatasaray in Turkey before. Very good. But not for me. I hate Galatasaray. I support Fenerbahce."

I asked him whether it was easy to buy tickets for the weekend matches. "Not so easy, but I will ask for you."

I was shown to my room and left in peace outside the door. Inside, I quickly surveyed my sleeping quarters for the next few days - flesh-coloured walls, a large, square window overlooking a deserted backalley and a clean bathroom that offered only lukewarm water. The bed beckoned invitingly and I gratefully wrapped myself in its warm blankets and drifted into a deep sleep.

At sunset, the minarets of the Blue Mosque jabbed the flame-red sky like black pokers stoking a furnace. I had absentmindedly wandered a few hundred yards east of the Paris Hostel after being roused from my slumber by the muezzin's call to prayer. Sauntering into the ancient Hippodrome, I was rewarded with a sight to behold. Perhaps sunsets in Istanbul are always this glorious, but earlier the sky had been so overcast that I would have sworn this couldn't happen. Some of the dark clouds were still visible over the horizon, their tattered edges glowing orange like oil-soaked rags set ablaze. But it was the foreground that captivated me: to my right, the Sultan Ahmet Camii - the Blue Mosque as it is more commonly known to tourists - with its six pencil-shaped minarets and cascading domes; to my left, the 1500-year-old Aya Sofya - the most important church in Christendom for a thousand years until the construction of St Peter's in Rome, by which stage it had been reincarnated as an Ottoman mosque.

There was still time to pay a visit to Aya Sofya - both less flamboyant and more imposing than its neighbour. Four towering minarets formed the bare skeleton of a cage around its perimeter, identical to those seen outside other mosques in Turkey, but - of course - a much later addition to this structure. The central edifice was a salmon-pink block bulging with rounded outbuildings and capped with a dome of monstrous proportions. A miracle of engineering, it seemed to hang in space like an elaborate lampshade, unsupported by columns or balustrades. The Ottomans had attempted to replicate this effect in other mosques, but had ultimately failed, the architects responsible paying for their professional shortcomings with their lives.

Inside, the bizarre amalgamation of Byzantine and Ottoman design was in evidence everywhere I looked. When Sultan Mehmet II - the Conqueror, or Fatih, as he became known to later generations - breached the walls of Constantinople in 1453, he rode straight to Aya Sofya to pay his respects to Allah. There, he found one of his soldiers hacking away at the polished stone floor with an axe. Mehmet asked the soldier why he was desecrating the church. "For Allah," responded the young man, upon which the Sultan struck him with a sword, saying: "For you, the women and treasures of the city; for me, the buildings." In converting the Orthodox Christian church into a mosque, Mehmet then took care to preserve much of the original Byzantine artistry, but the more 'idolatrous' mosaics portraying Christ on the throne were plastered over. Perversely, this decision may have prevented the mosaics from having faded and lost their glory when Ataturk - the father of the modern Turkish state - ordered the conversion of the mosque into a museum and restoration work began.

On exiting Aya Sofya, I was approached by one of the many carpet sellers who linger in Sultanahmet, preying on unwary tourists. He was a cripple, and dragged one useless leg behind him in short bursts, as though hauling a heavy sack uphill, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of a long black trenchcoat. He introduced himself as Turhan and asked if I would join him for tea. I knew this game from my travels in Egypt but acquiesced, since the night was upon us and there was little else to do at this time other than find somewhere to eat and drink.

Turhan soon realised that I wasn't interested in buying a carpet, and we chatted amicably about tourism in Istanbul, surrounded by beautiful, hand-woven fabrics.

"For 14 years I have worked in this store," mused Turhan, stroking his moustache affectionately, as though it were a small pet. "Never have things been so bad. Why your prime minister tell people not to come here? Bomb can happen anywhere, yes? In London, maybe?"

I tried to explain that many people in England would probably agree with him, but he was off.

"Terrorism bad, I think. Bad for everyone. Bad for Turkish people and for English people. And bad for business." He emphasised the last, implying that the slump in carpet sales was the overriding concern, and that Messrs Bush and Blair should take note.

I told Turhan that I wasn't dissuaded from travelling by terrorism. In fact, I was planning to visit Syria and Lebanon after Turkey.

"Syria!" he exclaimed, his voice rising an octave. "Syria is very bad, now. Very dangerous."

"Oh, really? Which parts, exactly?"

"Mmm ... all of it. Be very careful in Syria. Better not to go there, I think. Stay here, in Turkey."

I finished my apple tea and said my goodbyes to Turhan, who insisted I return if I changed my mind about buying a carpet. Strolling back to my hostel along the Divan Yolu, I felt charmed by Istanbul - and a little queasy about what lay further south.

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