After returning to istanbul, all the travel buddies started to drop off one by one until I was the only one left. It was weird being alone again after 2 week of traveling with more or less the same group, but it turned out to be good thing.
I was returning one day from Taxim after a day of shopping for books and hanging out in the cafes and walking from the Bosphorus, I stopped at an ATM. I stopped at an ATM and I must have been talking to myself, since the woman behind me in line said something to me. We started talking, and after finding out I was from San Francisco, she told me she had just returned from a friend's wedding in Tahoe. She was on her way to have drinks with her friends at the Four Seasons' Hotel which just happened to be next to mine (MY hotel, in case you are wondering, bears no resemblance to the Four Seasons) and she invited me along.
It turned out her friends were very nice as well as being very well connected in Istanbul. The woman, Muge, is the head of public relations at one of the best museums in Istanbul, the Sakip Sabanci. Her friend Typhon, is managing director of Shell Europe, and her other friend Turgon was starting an asian fusion restaurant ("kind of like your Slanted Door in San Fran") in the city.
One night they took me to a few bars and clubs and they seemed to know the owner of every place in town so we got the star treatment. One notable club is Babylon in Taxim. They had a jazz festival going on there and it is great for live music.
I got to see the museum where Muge works one day which is on the Asian side of Istanbul very near Bebek. Bebek is a nice little town that reminds me very much of Sausalito.
The Istanbul Film Festival is going on and we wanted to see a film called Hero which is a kung fu movie in the "Crouching Tiger" vein, and even has the girl from C.T., Zyang Zou, and also Jet Li in the film. Despite the movie being completely sold out, we walked right in. Unfortunately the movie was in mandarin with turkish subtitles, so I was obviously a little lost. The movie had cinematography that was better than Crouching Tiger, if you can believe it. Aesthetically, I have never seen scenes like in this movie. Incredible. I'm looking forward to when it gets to the states and I can finally understand it!!
There is also a movie by Oliver Stone that we are going to try to check out tonight. It is a documentary about Fidel Castro, and Stone actually spent 3 days with Castro interviewing him. Should be cool. It was great to meet these guys and hopefully we can stay in touch. It is always good to meet locals, because it is easy to get in the pattern of just meeting other travelers.
On a plane tomorrow morning to Tokyo through Cairo and Kuala Lumpur. Will be like 23 hours I think. Whoo hoo.
Anyway, to recap, Turkey rocks.