That night we went first to the Grand Bazaar, which I’ll talk more about later. Afterwards we got in a cab and asked our driver to take us to an area of the city called Taxim, which we were told is a good bar/restaurant area. Our cab driver dropped us off in what looked like a hotel district, and told us to go into a club located there. There were lots of big, bouncer looking men at the door, and once we got downstairs we saw that there were a few scantily clad women sitting at tables around the elevated “dance floor”…..our cab driver had taken us to a strip club! None of us had any interest of being there so we left and took to wandering the streets to find somewhere more suited to our tastes. We weren’t having any luck so my friend Cas asked a random guy on the street where we should go, and he invited us to come with him. He led us to the area we were looking for (full of people, restaurants and bar, just as we had envisioned) and took us to the third floor of a pub where a friend of his was holding a viewing party of her latest art collection. Totally random, but the group was made up of a whole bunch of different groups of friends so we only stuck out because we were Americans, not because everyone knew each other.
I talked to the guy who brought us there, Jeffy, for awhile (he spoke near perfect English). He was a 20-year old university student and we started talking about American politics, and the most striking comment he made was that it is common knowledge in Turkey that Americans hate Muslims. I tried to explain to him that that’s not the case at all, that because there are so many different types of people in the States that most people are pretty accepting, but I guess the American government’s actions speak otherwise.
Picture: Megan and Molly with the popcorn vendor on the street in Taxim.
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