"To have built in heaven high towers"

The tower is a symbol of strength, of power, of ambition. Not for nothing does Milton make his fallen angel Mulciber a tower-builder. A tower isn't just a fortress; it's a statement, a claim to attention.

Look at the late medieval Italian cityscape and you'll see it's full of assertive towers, like the Torre dei Guinigi in Lucca - fortresses for the feuding noble families of the independent city state. San Gimignano and Bologna bristle with towers like spines on a porcupine.

Look at the English Perpendicular church and you'll see the loftiness and aspiration of the tower used for the greater glory of God - and the glory, too, of those wealthy families which contributed to the building work. East Anglia is full of fine flint-built towers, with stone used to pick out the details; and Somerset, another wealthy area in the late middle ages, possesses marvellously ornate stone towers festooned with arcading, niches, turrets and pinnacles.

I thought of all this today when I read about Jean Nouvel's plans for a new tower in La Defense, Paris. The area is currently an office ghetto - busy by day, deserted at night - but there are plans to create more residential and services buildings. All of which could, of course, be done without a tower; but the tower is the icon, the symbol which encapsulates the city-changing ambition of the plan.

La Defense is not actually in Paris. It's in Hauts-de-Seine departement. Any development here will drain residents, jobs and taxes away from central Paris - whose 20 arrondissements are governed by Bertrand Delanoe, mayor of Paris.

So Delanoe has his own plans for a 'mini-Manhattan' of towers to regenerate the poorer east and north areas of central Paris. (Incidentally, are all cities the same - richer on the south and west, poorer on east and north? London certainly fits this schema. So does Berlin, I think - though that might be for different reasons.)

The same effect could surely be gained by high density building six or seven storeys high - which is what gives the centre of 19th century Paris its particular character. But no, it has to be towers - in a strident last burst of phallicism, towers are becoming the twenty-first century city's sine qua non.

But we've seen all this before. Back in the 1960s towers were the thing - and the sleep of reason produced monsters; the Tour Montparnasse, much hated by Parisians, and Centre Point, the greatest white elephant in London. (The French joke about Belgians being stupid, and retail the story of the Belgian terrorist who blew up the Tour Montparnasse - the joke being that if he ever did so, he'd become a French national hero overnight!)

It all reminds me of that 1980s battle between the City of London and Canary Wharf, an unseemly squabble between traditionalists and modernisers that saw petty local interest as more important than the ultimate fture of London as a financial centre. And that battle too saw the aggressive young upstarts building towers - the Cesare Pelli tower at Canary Wharf, at first standing in splendid isolation, then joined by others as the area began to thrive.

And that's the real sadness of towers. The more there are, the less the effect.

There's a place where the M11 comes over the brow of a hill and starts to descend into the Thames Valley, and you used to look ahead and see that one proud tower standing on its own. At dusk, with the lights on inside and a red aircraft warning light twinkling on the top, and the grey of the landscape misty beyond it, it was a view like no other.

And now it's just crowded into a forest of skyscrapers. It's lost what made it special.

"And so the whirliig of time brings about its revenges." Now, it's the City that is building the towers. The Gherkin, the Shard of Glass, the Cheesegrater, the Walkie-Talkie - towers that have entered the vernacular even before most of them have been built. The traditionalist financiers have turned avant-garde developers, learning from Canary Wharf.

Spirit of exploration

Yesterday, just as the air became dark with evening, I walked down the street, between terraced red brick houses, and heard a blackbird singing.

A song dark and mellifluous, hollow, endless. A song that seems to open on to other worlds. A song that might echo through the centuries.

And I saw him. Just a little black bird, sitting on a terracotta chimney pot, next to the TV arial.

Exploration is like that. Your virgin territory is someone else's back yard. A potent mix of the romantic and the everyday.

I see a little girl leaning out of her window above me in the back streets of Istanbul. She smiles. I smile back.

What do I really see? I think she's cute. She's a travel memory. Something to be put in my notebook, photographed, used, the way I'm using her in this post. But behind that, she has a life, friends, dreams, ambitions; and she's looking at me, a monstrosity on show, a freak European lost in the hillside tenements of Fener, just as I'm looking at her. So we've met, and then again, we haven't; we're both figures in each others' narratives.

And if you're an explorer, you think that through. And then you move on.

You always move on.

The blackbird's song makes me think of travelling. It's a footloose, itchy desire to be somewhere. It's not about taking a vacation, two weeks in Europe, let's see the Leaning Tower and the Changing of the Guard. It's about wanting to be moving. Wanting to open up to new experiences. A certain dissatisfaction that keeps you always moving on - in life and in geography, both.

I have a list of places I want to go. This year I crossed Istanbul of it. I'm hoping to cross off Iceland, too. But I'll never reach the end of the list, however long I live. Or if I do, I'll start a new list; places I want to go back to.

When I walked to Santiago de Compostela, I was always hungry. Explorers always are.

And then exploring is also about finding that one perfect moment that you can't plan for, that just happens, zen-like, miraculous. The green ray seen just once off Formentera as the last sliver of the sun rushes below the horizon. A rushing ice-cold fountain in a square in Spoleto. Alone, in moonlight, in St Mark's Square, flooded by the spring tide. The blackbird singing.

That blackbird could be singing in Herat, perched on a ruined minaret. Or in a rose garden in India.

Or here, in Norwich. But that melancholy, liquid song makes me yearn to be travelling, always moving on.

Turkish street food

One of the things I most enjoyed about Istanbul was the immense variety of fast food and street food. You never need to go to a restaurant in the city - the food will come to you.

In some cases quite literally. If you keep your eyes open in the area around the Grand Bazaar, around lunchtime, you can see waiters dashing across the street, carrying plates loaded with takeaway meals. Almost every courtyard has a little cubbyhole with a chai (tea) maker, and waiters scurry about carrying glasses of tea on little metal trays, or scouting for orders from the market stalls.

"Simit! Simit!" - that cry is almost as typical of Istanbul's noisescape as the call of the muezzin. A sesame seed covered soft bread ring, simit is the commonest of the snacks sold in the streets of the city. Some simit sellers have a sort of spear with the simit stacked on it. Others carry a pile of simit on a tray on their heads. Some have gone for a modern solution - a little barrow on bicycle wheels.

Borek is another of the fast foods. In cafes, you'll see huge wheels of cheese borek, but in the street, you'll find 'cigara borek', little sticks of borek. I actually prefer these - they're crispier and less fatty.

You'll find roasting chestnuts in some places. One guy does a roaring trade near the bus stands at Eminonu. Elsewhere, you can find corn on the cob slowly roasting. Most vendors stick to a single food - but there is one stall near Ayasofya that does both of these.

A sweet tooth is easily satisfied. Fried dough strips soaked in sweet syrup cost a lira (around a dollar). You'll soon learn to suck the syrup as you bite, or risk the syrup running down your chin. Or try gozleme, pancakes with sugar (they come in savoury versions too).

Thirsty? Stop at one of the barrows loaded with oranges, pomegranates, and a stainless steel squeezer, and you can get a glass of juice squeezed while you wait.

Doner kebab and fish sandwiches (balik ekmek, or 'fish bread') are not street food - they're a little higher on the evolutionary ladder. But you can order at a window and take them to eat elsewhere. And like the street food they're cheap; we paid 3 lira on average.

But my best memory of Turkish street food is not from Istanbul - it's from Buyuk Ada, the island we visited on a bright spring day. Right by the ferry pier is an ice cream parlour with an amazingly varied selection of ice cream ('dondurma'). Chestnut icecream, sour cherry ice cream, pistachio, coffee and chocolate chip. Icecream is never cheap in Turkey - we paid more for our icecreams than we did for most meals. But it was well worth it. If you think the Italians know all about ice cream... this parlour certainly is up there together with the one just off the main piazza in Siena,  or the one on the Tiber Island in Rome, as far as I'm concerned.

Hide and seek in the museum

There's a report that the Quai Branly museum is playing games with its visitors.

The museum possesses a 'Mayan' crystal skull. Actually, it's a fake - made in Germany, probably, as the quartz it's made of comes from the Alps, not from South America.

As the new Indiana Jones film, which stars one of these crystal skulls, opens, the curators of Quai Branly have decided to hide the skull. It's only about ten centimetres high, so that should be easy.

If visitors want to see the skull, they'll have to follow a treasure hunt through the museum.

I love the elements of play, game, hide-and-seek. Okay, this is really intended for younger visitors - but why should adults be excluded from the ludic elements of life? I shall definitely follow the treasure hunt!

The skull will be on exhibition from May 20th to September this year, and if you can read French there's an interesting pdf about the skull and the exhibition on the Museum website.

The bells! the bells!

I seem to be finding a lot of good things in the Telegraph these days (which, being a Guardian reader by nature, I find a bit of a worry...)

Today there's a video on Big Ben.

Let's make all pedantic negative point first. The photos of bellfounding that you see are obviously from between, say, 1910 and 1930 - they aren't of the original process. I'd prefer it if either correct archival material was used (but I don't think any Victorian artists or engravers ever visited the bell foundry - I'd love to be corrected) or modern footage.

But the thing I really loved was seeing a bellfounder talking about his bells. How you can not just pitch a bell, but also give it a particular voicing - which partials do you want to come out? I do wish this guy would give a real interview - not a sound bite, but ten whole minutes talking about his trade.

And how articulate he is. Look at the overalls and the dirty hands - you might think this is a tongue-tied builder. Not a bit of it.

Anyway, for what it's worth, a nice little video.

No sense of adventure

A piece in the Telegraph today points out that the British tourist - and I'm pretty sure this goes for other tourists too - is a lazy devil with no sense of adventure.

"This week a survey found that, while we're flying further than ever before, we're being lazier than ever when we get there. Almost half of us fail to leave the hotel compound for the duration of our holiday, and three quarters of us make no attempt to speak the local language (probably just as well)."

The writer makes the point that there is no 'terra incognita' left. There is nowhere to 'explore'.

What a lie.

Exploration starts when you step out of the door - or out of the hotel compound. Exploration starts when you decide to learn Turkish in a week. 'Bir patlican kebap, lutfen'; 'merhaba'; 'gule gule'.  (One aubergine kebab please; hello; goodbye.) It's rubbish but it gets a smile - you made contact.

Exploration starts when you decide to wander down a street just because there might be something at the bottom of it, or when you look up and smile at someone hanging out of their apartment window. Exploration starts when you decide to walk instead of take a taxi from one sight to another, or when you peer over a wall to see what's the other side.

Exploration starts by being curious. By being willing.

Willing to put in the work. Brain work. Leg work.

Now this guy says you're not a 'traveller' rather than a 'tourist' just because you've got a backpack.  And that's true. I am always amazed by the number of backpackers who aren't experiencing foreign culture, they're just meeting other backpackers of their own age who like the same bands and have the same backpacks.

But you're not automatically a 'tourist' just because you go somewhere that other people have been before.

You're a 'tourist' if you let *yourself* be packaged, rather than your holiday.

I hope he enjoys his next beach holiday. But if I just wanted to eat and drink and relax, I'd do it at home. Why spoil a good time by having to fly to get there?

A sense of adventure is not something that depends on virgin territory. You don't have to be Indiana Jones. But you've either got it, or you haven't.

Ten tips for adventure:

1. Take a good map and learn how to read it. This liberates you from the need for taxis, tour guides, groups - you can go wandering about to see what's there, and still know how to get back on track.


2. Talk to people as best you can.  All kinds of ways of learning the language - look at the labels in markets to learn the names of basic food; learn the words for local football teams and the words for 'good' and 'bad', you'll get a laugh that way from local football fans who'll be keen to tell you that their team is a good one. Learn hello, goodbye, thankyou, please. And learn 'toilets' - the one word that can really get you out of trouble!


3. Listen to your instincts. Sometimes you just get a feeling about someone, that they know what you want to find out, and can help. Often, it's right. Play your luck - in Sofia, I found that an old friend of my father's was a bagpipe fan, and we spent a day searching among the music stores for a good djura gaida. I found it! In Istanbul, we found the one man in the market, purely by chance, who could tell us to go to Unkapani to find the best music shops. If you're looking for them, you'll find these people.


4. Walk, walk, walk. I'm sure I could see more 'sights' if I took more efficient transport routes, but I'd never find all those back streets, those unexpected views.


5. Get up early. You can have Hagia Sophia or the Alhambra almost to yourself just for ten minutes if you're up good and early. And then the crowds come. Besides, if you're a photographer, early morning light is the best.


6. This is difficult for some of us, I know it is for me; but be willing to become a 'tourist sight' yourself, for the locals. You are something from outside their world - they're interested.  This can be extremely annoying - but equally, particularly with younger people, it can be a real chance to meet someone and make contact.


7. Keep your eyes open. One of the most striking things about Rome, for me, is the number of eighteenth century notices prohibiting littering - beautifully carved on fine marble. You'll miss them, though, unless you're looking.


8. Adventure can be strenuous. Remember to take a day off from time to time, whether that's to go for a country walk, laze about by the seaside or in a park, or pamper yourself in a classy hotel. When I walked the pilgrim's way to Compostela, I came down to Cahors late at night after a long day - and booked into an extremely posh hotel. Then I had a 'rest' day looking around Cahors. It was well worth it - I'm sure I was walking faster the day after!


9. Read up on where you're going. Before you go and when you're there. Read every information panel that you see (there are particularly good ones, shaped like oars, in Paris - in both English and French.) Maybe you don't need to know all that stuff, but it gives you a context you might not otherwise have. And sometimes you learn some very interesting things - not just about the sights, but about the local attitude to history or building. For instance, did you know that every single Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was a saint, a poet, and a good man, and most of them were also champion wrestlers? At least, that's true if you read the information panels in their mausoleums - which are I think just a little biased!


10. Take delight in both the ordinary and the extraordinary, the ancient and the modern, the classic and the spontaneous. Be open to new things. That's exploring.

A trip to Scutari

Most people with a few days to spend in Istanbul probably spend most of it in Sultanahmet, the central area. They visit Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, maybe Suleimaniye, and they take a cruise on the Bosphorus. They may go to Galata or Taksim, the modern side of the city. But I wonder how many go to Uskudar.

Uskudar is the old 'Scutari' - known to anyone who's ever had to study the Crimean War or learned about Florence Nightingale. Nowadays it's a bustling area with a fine fish market, and a real antidote to touristy Sultanahmet. Here you can wander along the street, buy yourself a fish sandwich (balik ekmek) for three lira (a bit more than a quid), and no one will try to sell you a carpet.

There's a fine mosque by Sinan, which I have to admit was my original reason for coming here. There's another lovely mosque by the side of the water, and a fine later baroque one with a lovely queen mother's tomb like a birdcage, open to the weather; and an old hamam by Sinan, now a rather aimless and down at heel shopping mall.

But it was the unassuming bustle of the place that really won me over. The fish market, one of the stalls bedecked with a hundred  economy lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling like a bead curtain gone mad; the narrow, thronged streets, full of spice shops and baklava sellers; the way every ferry from Eminonu spewed out a crowd on to the quay. This was real Turkey, not some show put on for tourists - and it was a lively place.

We didn't get as far as the greatest of the mosques, on the hill over Uskudar. Which is a pity - because apparently it's very good, and there's a great view across to the Golden Horn.

But instead, we took the ferry back, and drank black tea, in the same tulip shaped glasses on the same red-bordered saucers you will get everywhere in Istanbul; I wonder if there's a law that tea vendors must all use exactly the same crockery? A surprisingly comfortable way to travel, on the choppy currents between Europe and Asia.

A trip from Europe to Asia, in twenty minutes, for 1 lira 30. You can't do much better than that for an afternoon's travel.