perguntou

ao turco na Almirante Reis onde ir para além de Istanbul. além de Istanbul? sair de Istanbul para quê, há tudo em Istanbul-- (deveria ter m, mas gosto mais com n, ou então Stamboul, com o s maiúsculo a parecer as calças de um paxá)

o início de De Amicis:

"The emotion I felt on entering Constantinople, almost obliterated from my recollection all that I had seen in my ten days voyage from the Straits of Messina to the mouth of the Bosphorus. The blue Ionian Sea, motionless as a lake, the distant mountains of the Morea tinted with rose by the first rays of the sun, the ruins of Athens, the Gulf of Salonica, Lemnos Tenedos, the Dardanelles, and many persons and things that had' 
diverted me during the voyage, all grew pale in my mind at the sight of the Golden Horn ; and now, if I wish to describe them, I must work more from imagination than from memory. 

In order that the first page of my book may issue warm and living from my mind, it must commence on the last night of the voyage, in the middle of the Sea of Marmora, at the moment when the captain of the ship approached me, and putting his hands upon my shoulders, said, " Signori, to-morrow at dawn we shall see the first minarets of Stamboul."

o livro todo, Constantinople, aqui.

continuando:

Ah ! reader, full of money and ennui ; you, who a few years ago, when you felt a whim to visit Constantinople, replenished your purse, packed your valise, and within twenty-four hours quietly departed as for a short country visit, uncertain up to the last moment whether you should not after all, turn your steps to Baden-Baden ! If the captain had said to you, " To-morrow morning we shall see Stamboul," you would have answered phlegmatically, "I am glad to hear it." But you must have nursed the wish for ten years, have passed many winter evenings sadly studying the map of the East, have inflamed your imagination with the reading of a hundred books, have wandered over one half of Europe in the effort to console yourself for not being able to see the other half, have been nailed for one year to a desk with that purpose only, have made a thousand small sacrifices, and count upon count, and castle upon castle, and have gone through many domestic battles ; you must finally have passed nine sleepless nights at sea with that immense and luminous image before your eyes, so happy as even to be conscious of a faint feeling of remorse at the thought of the dear ones left behind at home ; and then you might understand what these words meant, " To-morrow at dawn, we shall see the first minarets of Stamboul;" and instead of answering quietly, "I am glad to hear it," you would have struck a formidable blow with your closed fist upon the parapet of the ship as I did. 

One great pleasure for me was the profound conviction I had that my immense expectations could not be delusive. There can be no doubt about Constantinople, even the most diffident traveller is certain of his facts ; no one has ever been deceived, and there are none of the fascinations of great memories and the habit of admiration. It is one universal and sovereign beauty, before which poet and archeologist, ambassador and trader, prince and sailor, sons of the north and daughters of the south, all are overcome with wonder. It is the must beautiful spot on the earth, and so judged by all the world. Writers travels arriving there are in despair. Perthusiers stammers, Tournefort says that language is impotent, Fonqueville thinks himself transported into another planet, La Croix is bewildered, the Viconte de Marcellus becomes ecstatic, Lamartine gives thanks to God, Gautier doubts the reality of what he sees, and one and all accumulate image upon image ; are as brilliant as possible in style, and torment themselves in vain to find expressions that are not miserably beneath their thought. Chateaubriand alone describes his entrance into Constantinople with a remarkable air of tranquillity of mind ; but he does not fail to dwell upon the beauty of the spectacle, the most beautiful in the world, he says, while Lady Mary Wortley Montague, using *he same expression, drops a perhaps, as if tacitly leaving the first place to her own beauty, of which she thought so much. 

There is, however, a certain cold German who says that the loveliest illusions of youth and even the dreams of a first love are pale imaginations in the presence of that sense of sweetness that pervades the soul at the sight of this enchanted region ; and a learned Frenchman affirms that the first impression made by Constantinople is that of terror. Let the reader imagine the illusions which such words of fire a hundred times repeated, must have caused in the brains of two enthusiastic young men, one of twenty-four, and the other twenty-eight years of age ! But even such illustrious praises did not content us, and we sought the testimony of the sailors. Even they, poor, rough fellows as they were, in attempting to give an idea of such beauty, felt the need of some word or simile beyond the ordinary, and sought it, turning their eyes here and there, pulling their fingers, and making attempts at description with that voice that sounds as if it came from a distance, and those large, slow gestures with which such men express their wonder when words fail them. "To come into Constantinople on a fine morning," said the head steersman, "you may believe me, Signori, it is a great moment in a man's life."

- -
ah, I couldn't agree more.