So as many of you know, I spent the holidays, including New Years, in Istanbul, with Shashank, Bhargavi, Sujit and Terence. For those of you that don’t know, Istanbul is located in Northwestern Turkey (surprisingly I actually do have a friend, to remain nameless, that never even heard of Istanbul until I told him/her I went there…even more surprisingly, this friend was NOT Smitty).
Istanbul is an AMAZING place. There’s so much history when you travel to places like this, it really puts the U.S. to shame. For instance, we visited the Aya Sofya, originally built as a church in the 4th century. Over 1,600 years ago. Compare that to the U.S., where pretty much everything was built in the last few hundred years.
I won’t get into all the boring minutiae of our trip, such as all the sights we visited and every bar/club/restaurant we walked/stumbled into. Instead, a few highlights/anecdotes:
·First and foremost, props to Bhargavi for hooking up a tight apartment, just off Itsiklal Caddesi, a long street lined with restaurants and retail shops. Huge, 2-bedroom, 2-story apartment, with a rooftop that would have been much more useful during a summer visit. Compared to a hotel, much more conducive to watching Family Guy on my portable DVD player, pre-gaming with drinking games not played since college and cooking (apparently that $40k a year Sujit is dropping at HBS has taught him how to make one mean omelette)
·If you ever visit Turkey, bring your own liquor. A lot of it. Fortunately we had the prescience to do so. Hard alcohol is HEAVILY taxed there. Most places we went to, drinks (except for wine and the local beer, Efes, a solid Pilsner) were running $15-25
·You would not believe how hard it was to find hummus on our trip. Seriously. Only 1 restaurant we went to had it. Poor vegetarian Sujit. Thank God for kebabs and being a carnivore.
·Squeezing 5 people in a cab was very cost-effective, but not nearly as easy as it was back in the NY days with Anuj
·No overseas trip would be complete without the gratuitous police run-in. Ours occurred around 2 or 3 am on Thursday night after a drunken few hours at a club called Babylon. While we were stumbling home (OK, I was stumbling, the other 4 were simply walking), Sujit, T and I were approached by a few plainclothes demanding to see our passports and/or Visas and/or money. When Bhargavi showed up a few seconds later however, and we explained (in that broken English that you always speak in foreign countries) that we had an apartment just down the street, they let us go. No bribes, no jail time.
·New Years’ Eve was spent at a club called Reina. We basically picked the place because when we called they said the music would be varied, including “international”. International basically ending up being “Candy Shop” and “Drop it Like its Hot”, but hey, it was the only non-iPod American music I heard the whole trip, so I’ll take it. It was a nice club right along the Bosphorus River. Very upscale scene, basically the crème de la crème of Istanbul and 5 random Indian tourists. $100 for unlimited drinks (clearly a good deal given the price of liquor). All-in-all a good time. When compared with my options of spending New Years at a club in NY, LA or SD with a bunch of bumbling, stumbling drunk idiots, I obviously made the right decision.
·The flight home was interesting. I made the mistake of flying Turkish Air, which had clearly overbooked the flight. And I don’t mean 5 or 10 people being offered $500 vouchers to take the next flight. There was some computer glitch and they seriously must have overbooked by at least 50 people, probably much more. So, after a 3 hour delay, rather than boarding by rows, they just told people to get in line and basically there was a mad scramble to get on the flight, at which point, we were told to just grab whatever seat we could find. I was one of the lucky ones, and I can only imagine how many people were stranded in Istanbul until the next day’s flight.
Overall summary – Istanbul is highly recommended, particularly for those that appreciate history. Great historical sights, good food, good-enough nightlife. I can’t speak for the rest of Turkey, but it seems like a country that would be great to explore (ideally during the summer) for a few weeks on a backpacking trip.
Happy New Year. Go Trojans.
Labels: Travel
