Arnavutköy once perfumed Istanbul with a strawberry so small and fragrant it had its own name. The neighbourhood — the name means "Albanian village" — climbs the European shore between Bebek and Kuruçeşme in tiers of nineteenth-century wooden houses, their bay windows leaning toward the water. For generations it was one of the Bosphorus's most mixed quarters, where Greek and Jewish families lived alongside their Muslim neighbours; the great Orthodox church still rises a few streets from the mosque. At the shore's northern bend sits Akıntıburnu, the "cape of the current," where the strait runs so hard that sailing ships once waited for a tow to get past.
Today you wander lanes barely wide enough for a car, past pastel timber facades and the odd surviving mansion, then come out onto a waterfront of fish restaurants and tea gardens. You hear gulls, ferry horns, the slap of the current on the seawall. The strawberry terraces are long gone under the city, but the painted houses remain, and on a clear afternoon the light off the water turns the whole street gold. It is a place to walk slowly and eat by the sea.