15th August - Partying in Taksim Square

It took an extended bout of door knocking on the part of Cem to get me to wake up, was in quite a deep sleep. Awesome breakfast of fried cheese, boiled eggs and olives picked by Cem and his father, bread, Turkish coffee, tea and yogurt. Eventually we left the house and went down to the old part of Kartal. However on the way I finally got to tick off one of the things i want to do in my life (these include: natural hot spring nude swimming with beer in winter in Japan, sauna in Sweden in winter, working as a commercial raft guide overseas). I paid a man to shave me. Just my face you filthy beggars. It was something of an anti-climax, but still enjoyable, as I hadn't shaved for 3 weeks (I know you are imagining a massive bushy beard, but you would be better of imagining a random distribution of random length hairs which do slightly resemble a beard from a distance). I guess i was hoping for a barber shop from the American mid west of the 1850's, possibly was hoping for too much. I also wanted a guy to be sharping a blade on a piece of leather, but they just insert a fresh blade nowadays for hygiene reasons. Damn hygienic practices. Anyways, it was cool to finally get shaved and also great to get rid of my crappy beard.

So, down to Kartal we continued. There is a nice pedestrian street. We went to a nice open air cafe and had some tea and coffee. I taught Felix how to play checkers and Cem taught me how to play backgammon. After some time a friend of Cem's came along and joined us. We then went for some more food, this was called 'Manti', kind of like ravioli but Turkish. Went to a spice store was pretty amazing! They don't do things by half measures. You know, like 50kg bags of cinnamon sticks. Being in Istanbul feels like the halfway point of my Euro trip. Not sure why, just feels that way, probably due to the fact that I am so far from Europe and still have 2 months before i go home.

Then we returned back to Cem's place, showered and prepared for some partying! We went to Taksim Square, the main party area of Istanbul. It was great and cheap! We met up with some other CSers and had a little party. Was a lot of fun and the atmosphere is just fantastic. It was absolutely crowded, the busiest bar area I have ever been too (and I think that is saying something!).  Took forever to get home, minibus home. However, Istanbul is one of the most amazing cities at night that I have ever been to. Just amazing!