It probably didn’t help that a power outage had knocked out the lights and the escalators linking 4.Levent station with the new Sapphire Shopping Mall or that the pavement in front of it was so badly cracked that it had had to be fenced off.

However, whoever designed the entrance of this latest temple to consumerism so that only about three or four people can squeeze in alongside the security barrier and whoever forget to put boards indicating which shops could be found where needs shooting, as does whoever decided that just two small elevators (only one of them currently working) would be enough to service the large 54th floor viewing platform that permits visitors to see all the way from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and the Princes Islands. Are they insane? There was a wait to come back down again this week mid-afternoon on a weekday out of season. What on earth will happen on a summer Sunday afternoon as families pours in to see the 4D (what’s that?) film of İstanbul’s highlights on the same floor? I don’t suffer from the sort of vertigo that would make it hard to look at the view. On the other hand when it occurred to me that we couldn’t quickly return to base I began to feel decidedly twitchy. It costs 15TL to go up to the platform and 25TL if you want to see the film as well, so the owners should be able to rake in a small fortune – unless people decide not to bother when they see the queues. As for having to queue to put your ticket back through the security barrier on the way out again. I repeat, are they insane?