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Can a human being turn into a mezze? Culturally I'm certainly becoming a mixed platter, with the little inedible bits pushed to one side. Last weekend I was eating Imperial portions of Sachertorte in Vienna and this Sunday drinking lousy local red in the shadow of the Blue Mosque, calming down after a wedding, as night hawks circled the extraordinary minarets and the exhortations of the Muezzin to the faithful failed to make my eggplant dip taste any better.

But first Vienna and a titbit for Opera lovers about to ride the Ringstrasse in Franz Joseph's overmighty city. Things close early, so map your route. After an evening with the very proper Viennese, watching greedily as the flames of hell consumed their favourite libertine (appropriately Don Giovanni slid down a table into the abyss), we couldn't get dinner anywhere. We made up for it after a night at the State Opera and a glittering production of Ernani which, talking of mixed metaphors, my partner was convinced isn't by Verdi but somebody called Vermicelli.

Just over the road is Sirk, owned by the Hotel Bristol, where I’d happily have stopped for a light repast. But it was full so we went for the glass doors of its sister restaurant Korso, just to the left. The place tinkles like cut glass, the service shimmers and the ribs of lamb are as sliceable as butter. It was off-putting, it's true, to think that so many Viennese had voted unrepentantly for a Far Right Party, and I'm convinced that all that high culture just overlays a truly savage beast. But any schadenfreude for the Austrians was tempered by the pudding. Architecturally, central Vienna is one giant wedding cake and apart from music, puddings are what the Viennese do best. The vanilla cream, scrolled in pancakes and edged with sorbet and leaves of marzipan, was fantastic.

So to real wedding cakes, sliced with a scimitar in Istanbul. The bride's father, Mr Birdal, is a prominent human rights activist in Turkey who only recently came out of prison. He was locked up for two years for daring to suggest that the Turkish Government might have some responsibility for the Kurdish situation. Just before he was imprisoned a gunman burst into his office and left twelve bullet holes in him. It was very moving to see him standing tall, shining with pride for his daughter.

Dip into the soup of Turkey's deeply complex politics and you can usually find something to put you off your food. I didn't let it get to me on the terrace of Rami below the Blue Mosque, though the food was what put me off the food. That didn't really matter because its terrace, in a charming old Ottoman House, is one of the nicest places to eat in the old quarter. But if you are in Istanbul for a short while make sure to take a taxi down to Ortokoy and have lunch with the students in the cobbled square by the waterfront. Apart from the enchanting little mosque and book stall, on a windy day, with a rowing boat bobbing on the Bosphorous, at eye level with tankers ploughing towards the Black Sea and palaces that seem to float towards Asia, you're reconnected with the living significance of the sea to that phenomenal city.

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