Taksim Square
At nights, the side streets overflowed with diners sampling cold mezzes and sweet fishes on tables that crowded through the doors, over the balconies and into the pedestrian way.
I wanted to go to Taksim Square, hearing that it was a fun area from my friend Baris. That's when the old tout (retired mechanic) on the park bench said to me, "Why do you want to go there? Taksim – there's nothing. They'll charge you a lot of money and steal your wallet. Come – come to my friend's shop and have some tea. Sultanhamet is where you want to be. Come look at some carpets -- you don't have to buy. Come!"
I got variations of that speech whenever I asked directions to Taksim from locals in Sultanhamet. Extremely cordial, they were annoying buggers when blathering about package tours. But enough of the tourist bastion.
Taksim is the modern Istanbul that Turkey proudly shows. Young couples in Diesel denims and Isley tops strutted down cobblestone thoroughfares, gelato cones in hand, while other younger and more beautiful couples lounged languorously on padded cafe seats along crooked side alley-streets, puffing water pipes, slapping backgammon pieces, smoking cloves and sipping bitter cups of Turkish espressos.
It's the fashionable district, where everyone could be on a magazine cover, and if not, at least on a quarter-page. Even the old men, who may not grace GQ or Esquire, marched in perfect step to the postcard image of the dapper gentlemen: combed whiskers, trilbies and Gatsbies, curved pipes, and suit coats that draped decorously from their pot-bellies. They huddled away from the glitzy cafes, among newspapers and tiny tea cups in low wooden chairs at diners and tea houses that seemed to be transported from the 1950s.
After a couple of days in a boutique hotel in Sultanhamet, Yuppie Nomad and I opted for a one-star hotel in Tünel, a district on the edge of Taksim, where an underground tram dropped us each day from our jaunts to the fish sandwiches at the harbors. We were glad we made the move.
At nights, the side streets overflowed with diners sampling cold mezzes and sweet fishes on tables that crowded through the doors, over the balconies and into the pedestrian way. Each night, the streets were jam-packed with families and couples and loners, doner kebaps and ice cream and beers in hand, gliding, fumbling, stumbling in a raucous rotation past the sparkling shops' windows, pubs, lounges and assortments of diners, steakhouses, and seafood markets...
I must digress: this was where I discovered the delectable 'mussel with pilaf' -- saffron-colored mussels piled high into pyramids, with lemon wedges and rice squished onto their shells, advertised by smiling boys on street corners that was also shared by pistachio vendors, corn hawkers a pretzel conjurors.
And the gleaming candy shops were filled with gooey Turkish delights.
Each night, we wandered amongst the crowds and sampled the street food. Music then supplanted meals.. by wandering violinists, by street corner trumpeters, by house bands, by jazz quartets – then it's off to the coffeehouses, to the water pipes and conversations that goes something like, "Gosh, our lives are pretty hard, aren't they? Imagine that..."