iSTANBUL nightlife

This city is just so gorgeous at night. We left the camera home when we went out last night, so I'll do my best to paint a picture. I will admit that I will probably get the order of the night mixed up in the recounting of it, but nevertheless I hope its a good idea of what Istanbul's night life has to offer (which is a LOT!). We met up with Andrew's friend Elif, who also grew up in Michigan. Her parents are Turkish and she's now living in Istanbul. Like everyone we've met here she's friendly and interesting AND she speaks Turkish- a great interpreter. We started with fancy drinks at a bar called Leblon, named after the artsy/posh neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. I recognized the Caipirinha on the menu right away, but settled for a vodka drink with sour cherry juice because I'm just so intrigued by it. It was tart and delicious with sticks of green apple on top.

Then we moved on to a new club/bar/restaurant Propaganda, which has a really friendly owner and an elegant loungey, artsy feel. The place regularly has really good live music, and events, and is generally really nice.

Elif and Julia and I split for a quick street food bite before continuing on with the rest, and she introduced us to Kumpir- baked potato which they split and mix with cheese, and any other toppings you'd like; pickles, tomatoes, a yogurt mint dill sauce, beet sauce, potato salad, etc.

Realizing that our money would run out quick if we kept buying 30TL drinks, we supplemented by buying from a liquor store. The local brand of vodka smells a bit like rubbing alcohol, but it is half as much as Smirnoff.

Next was QUIT- a fun hole in the wall bar made out of wood entirely with a pair of girl djs jamming out techno house beats , and having a great time. This was a bottle of beer kind of place, small and intimate. The music was great; QUIT brings in a lot of local bands and djs to play.

Vida terrace was next, a somewhat secret entrance into what looked like an apartment building (I later realized it WAS an apartment building). With this amazing, somewhat exclusive rooftop terrace bar. The railings were glass, and allowed you to see the entire city from the 7th floor building, It was really crowded and it turned out the people we were supposed to meet there weren't there, but that didn't stop us from lingering a bit just to soak in the view.

We made it to Babylon around 1:30am, a pretty important music venue in the area to see a famous German-Turkish DJ Deniz Kurtel that Zeynep and Jasmin wanted to see, and as soon as you walked in this was apparent. Along with the long narrow dj stage at the front, there were speakers taller than me, and you could feel your heart vibrate with the beats they were spinning. The music was great, easy to get yourself lost in it, and just dance. There was an equally good visual aspect of the show too, they were projecting 3d animations/art along with the music beats on the black background behind the dj. I found that equally amazing and cool, and wonder if the musicians work with people who do that for them, or if they do it themselves? Sadly it turned out we were misinformed about the time of her show, and she was finishing up when we got there.

We moved finally to the last place of the night, literally an awning-outdoor-hallway-of-a-bar with a dj mixing with little more than a mac laptop. This place was so crowded you literally could not move without pushing people out of the way, though they didn't seem to mind it. Everyone was into the music and there to have a good time.

Julia and I called it a night at 4:30am and felt like wusses since we were the first to go. A whole day of sight-seeing and a full night of bar hopping wore us out, in the best way.

Great night.

I love the power sign icon "O" in the Babylon logo.
This shot was taken with Julia's phone