There is a real magic to these places where two contients kiss across the water, gaze upon each other through a chink in the wall like Pyramus and Thisbe.

I will never forget walking along the Spanish coast south of Cadiz and all of a sudden seeing land ahead of me across the water, and realising that was Africa.

The way the Mediterranean brings together three land masses in such a small space, their collections of cultures intertwined over millennia, is quite something. But Istanbul is genuinely unique in the way that a single city straddles two continents.