Turkish Nights

Seeing the news about the President's visit to Turkey today and tomorrow has caused me to reflect on our weekend trip to Istanbul last November. In past posts I've talked about how amazing Turkey was...how it might have been my favorite trip of the whole semester. One of the best things we did that weekend was go out and sample the nightlife near Taksim Square. Like most great nights out, I didn't even really want to go at first. I was tired or whiny or something.

The main street was packed with a flowing mass of pedestrians. Tons of people were out and about. There was a very relaxed feeling of it all...like everyone was just chilling or hanging out, enjoying the beautiful night. It didn't seem very clubby or pretentious. And yes, they served beer. I thought that maybe because Turkey is predominately Muslim, beer wouldn't be available and/or frowned upon (a scary prospect considering that we had been living in Ireland for two months at that point). That was not the case. Our hostel even had a bar on the rooftop terrace. Instead of trying to describe the scene, I'll put up a bunch of photos and a few video clips that Andrew took.

Oh yeah, another great part about the Turkey trip: Tom was acting up, so I kicked him squarely in the face. It shut him up right away.