Türkiye

İstanbul rewards a fourth visit more than a first. We stay on the quieter side of the Golden Horn, in a converted han with eleven rooms, and cross by boat rather than by bridge. Mornings begin at the fish market in Karaköy; afternoons are for the Kariye mosaics, a hammam built in 1584, and a table on a rooftop that faces nothing modern.

Cappadocia is a three-hour flight east and a different century. We use a cave house in Ürgüp with nine rooms, fly at first light when the balloons are still below the ridge, and walk the valleys in the late afternoon when the tuff turns the colour of honey. Dinner is cooked in a village house by the family who owns it.