Of all the great waterways I know, only the Grand Harbor in Malta and, perhaps, the Chao Phraya in Bangkok seen from the Oriental Hotel can hold a candle to it.

From Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich.  Page 186. 

In the early hours of the following morning we finally drove into Istanbul, pulled up, exhausted, in the car park of the recently opened Hilton Hotel, checked in and fell into bed. Only when we woke did we draw the curtains—and gaze down, for the first time, at the Bosphorus. Of all the great waterways I know, only the Grand Harbor in Malta and, perhaps, the Chao Phraya in Bangkok seen from the Oriental Hotel can hold a candle to it. Nowadays it is spanned by three huge bridges; in the 1950s these were still unbuilt; consequently there were far more ferryboats even than one sees today, milling around in all directions like ants, while the constant parade of infinitely larger vessels—tankers, cruise ships, naval destroyers—glided nonchalantly among them on their way to and from the Black Sea. One could sit for hours on the balcony in the summer sunshine, just watching—and one still can. Half a century later and after heaven knows how many subsequent visits, I find the magic as powerful as ever.

Over the next week we explored every corner of Istanbul. After Venice, it is my favorite city; unlike Venice, however, —which just lies there looking beautiful and saying “take me, take me”—Istanbul has to be worked on, and that work was a good deal harder then than it is now. The whole city was desperately down at heel. There were practically no tourists, and the great monuments tended to be open for only a few hours a week; one had to sit down and work out a careful timetable in advance if one wanted to see them all. In St. Sophia, access to the upper gallery (and therefore to the greatest of the mosaics) was forbidden. Sometimes, as for St. Eirene, appointments had to be made; sometimes—at Kücük Ayasofya mosque, for example, formerly the sixth-century Justinianic church of St. Bacchus and St. Sergius—one of the little boys forever playing around it had to be bribed with bonbons to go and find the key. The glorious early fourteenth-century mosaics at Kariye Cami were still under restoration; only a few were visible. Restaurants too were a problem. Pandeli’s over the Spice Bazaar was usually the best bet (and, with its turquoise-tiled walls, wonderfully rich in local color) but like most of its kind was open only for lunch; for dinner there was the Regence, kept by two old white Russian ladies of villainous appearance, or, more often than not—since their cooking spelt gastronomic crucifixion—back to the hotel.