Istanbul baby!

Wrapped up my Turkey tour in Istanbul and the hung out for four days with my friend Kyoko. She flew in from London for a short break.

We hit the main sights, haggled our way around the Grand Bazaar and Spice Market and even picked up some great Mavi jeans. The highlight, however, was the last night...

We'd been out all day and decided to stay local for something to eat for dinner. The night before as we dodged through the guantlet of restaurants veying for our business. We had used the excuse that we were meeting friends somewhere else to get away from the annoying "see my restaurant", "my turn to show you menu", and such. The kicker was that we actually ran into people I knew. Two of my tour mates were dining at one of the places we blanked. As we stalked off past the restaurant, Rene was madly knocking on the window. She eventually ran out and down the street after us and we ended up joining her and her husband, Jerry for a drink and snack. They raved about the food, so Kyoko and I decided to give it a try the next night. That's where the fun begins.

I had taught Kyoko backgammon the night before, and we were determine to get some more practice in. The problem is that cafes with boards don't generally serve drinks, plus Kyoko was looking for some shisha. Our restuarant jumped into action and brought all the elements to us. This meant that we'd keep drinking their beer. We started to attract attention and pretty soon had some Germans from the next table and locals join us in the fun. We were slamming tiles and rolling the dice like pros. Eventually, the restuarant needed to close, but fear not, one of the locals owned the hostel next door and had a roof top bar. Whoo hoo - let's move the party.

We had Marco and Philip from Germany, Anna from Vancouver, Anthony the local hostel host and a cast of other characters that came and went over the course of the night. The drinks were flowing and the gang was lively. We even managed to paint Philip's nails on his left extremdies. Don't know how he was going to explain that one to his buddies the next day.

Kyoko and I made it home at 5am. Good stories to be told, photos to prove it and a full blown Istanbul hangover for me the next day. All good souvenirs.