Originally posted: February 24th, 2014
Ok I left off due to time constraints. This is the story of that day. Bulleted.
-Woke up and found a new friend in the Hostel name Jin, a cool Korean girl who agreed to go find the Suleymaniye mosque with me. We walked and got lost (my favorite! – seriously, I enjoy getting lost) and eventually found it. It was closed, but we got inside for a second. It’s about two Americas old. Jin is a fun travel companion. She showed me some of her photos from past adventures, and made me wish I had enough time/money to go on a hot air balloon ride to Kapadokya. It looked amazing
-Ok that was a long bullet. Sorry
-Then I came back and made plans to meet with a couple acquaintances of mine from F&M who grew up in Istanbul and are living/working there now.
-Zeynep and Aysa are blonde twins and, much to their frustration, don’t look like locals (all the turks except for them have dark hair). It gave me great pleasure to see the shop owners/salesmen pick them out as tourists like me and hassel them to get them into their shops or to buy stuff. It gave me even greater pleasure to see the looks on these guys’ faces when they talked back to them in Turkish. Same look of surprise/delight/shock every single time. Then they’d start chatting and I’d sit back and watch and hope they weren’t making fun of me.
-They took me down some back streets I had never seen, then I introduced them to my friends Aussie Ray and Dugan (pr. Duwan …kind of), who owned the hostel. Then we came up with a plan to go see the Picasso exhibit, then go catch the HUGE Galatasaray v Besiktas footy match at a pub and then go to dinner and then go to the best night club in the city Angelique. Ray and I and the twins set off on an adventure
-Actually before we left the hostel, I had put on a Didier Drogba (the best soccer player in Istanbul who plays for Galatasaray, one of Istanbul's three pro clubs) jersey that I had bought from a street vendor earlier that day, and Zeynep told me "You can't wear that out." I thought she was joking, but Aysa concurred and there was no joking looks. I told them I'd be fine and walked around them towards the exit, eager to get going. Then the owner of the hostel saw me and jumped in front of me. "You can't go outside with that on, I don't want you getting in a fight or stabbed or something." Deadly serious look. I put on a different shirt and we hit the streets.
-We took forever getting there (mostly walking time) and missed the Picasso exhibit.
-The exhibit was in a ritzy part of town that didn’t have any pubs to watch the match, so we kept walking. Did not catch the game. My only regret of the whole trip thus far.
-The girls took us to this restaurant that blew my mind. It was pretty fancy and we thought we were just going in to use the bathroom or something when they surprised us by saying they had already made a res for us there and we had a window table over the water. Lovely scenery, watching the boats ride by through the light reflected off the water from the huge bridge. The dinner was pricy by Turkish food standards, I had a pizza that was thirty some lira, but it was one of the best pizza’s I’ve ever had (meatballs and mushrooms on it).
here’s a view of our dinner view
-We enjoyed it way more than the couple seated next to us who demanded to be moved away from “that tourist with the obnoxious American accent.”
– After dinner, we went for a walk down the river front and watched people setting off fire lanterns, more affectionately known as mini hot air balloons.
Schick Quattro: No longer the sharpest foursome known to mankind
– After that, we walked to Club Angelique (all these places were within a couple hundred yards from each other). Angelique was nice as all get out. The second floor deck over the Bosphorus was, again, amazing scenery, and the heaters were putting in major work.
View from the club. The lower level was also a dock where rich Istanbullies pulled up in their boats to party. #notus #iminatshirt #noonetoldmewehadtowearsuitstothis
– fire lantern landed on one of the roofs around the outside of the deck, caught on fire, and rained fire down on one table, also lighting a man’s jacket on fire. Angelique staff responded promptly (I thought it was just part of the club’s show, meaning that the party was starting soon) and sprayed him with a fire extinguisher…. Awesome night so far already!
– The music slowly and steadily picked up the pace, and the second floor’s eclectic mix morphed into house music best described by Will Hunting on a couch.
– After 12 is when the place starts to fill up, so at 12:15 we went downstairs to the more dancing part of the club. There were beautiful women everywhere. Sources tell me they were Russian, and a good 15 women there had me beat by two inches. I know they’re wearing heels, but I’ve never seen such a concentration of tall women. It was like we were partying at a shooting location party for Turkey’s Next Top Model. Also, men in suits everywhere. Also, 95% of the girls dresses were black. Guys suits too. Matter of fact. Everyone was wearing black. Everyone except four.
– Everyone was dressed to the nines and suited and booted and Ray and I were standing there, him in his flannel and me in my baby blue t-shirt and jeans (respectively) just thinkin, “Well they definitely can’t spot the foreigners tonight.” If the shirts didn’t give it away, our dancing did. Apparently Turks don’t dance all that much at clubs? Don’t get me wrong, people were dancing, it just wasn’t a scene from Step Up 9 or anything
– We went downstairs and despite getting in the way of every server/bartender ever, danced and danced and danced and danced and I spilled some girls wine who ran into me and we sneaked outta that room but we came back and danced some more. The music was about 35% turkish domestic music, 30% house, and 35% hip hop/mashups and I loved all of it. They even played some Azealia Banks, which I’d never heard out before.
– We split a cab halfway home (Aysa and I fell asleep in true Keith Ely fashion, Ray and Zeynep probably did too) and let the girls go on their merry way back to the Asian side of the city.
-Ray and I adventured home through the aftermath of the massive riots that had gone down in Taksim. Funny that we were partying in Taksim the night before and the night after a wild riot went down there.
-Anyway, we got back to the hostel in only 55 minutes, beating my previous night’s best by an hour and a half. That was about it
-Went to bed happy!