Paco´s Life: Madrid

Istanbul II

30 December 2006 9:37 AM | In ICEX, Istanbul, Nightlife, Travel |

All pictures from the second night of partying in Istambul are here!

The plan for the night was to seriously go out. Here it was when a group of people who would end up messing the situation was formed. Tel Aviv, Moscow, Bucharest and me got one of the apartments and started to drink the rum we had brought. Paris and Warsaw were lost with a friend of the second one and the girls were having a more relaxed plan so it was our obligation to get the night wild. Very serious drinking time we had, we ended up walking the center of Istambul with a huge bottle full of rum. The night had many anecdotes to tell about, but probably they are only funny if you were there to live them. Like the communication problems we had when I was trying to use Javi´s phone, that moment when I kicked mine directly towards the knee of a poor Turkish girl who was passing by or Moscow´s impressive ability to take pictures been drunk We got together in a nice Turkish place and the night happened to be very very funny :-)Great picture, the night punishers team almost complete, just Prague is missing

All pictures from New Year´s Eve in Istambul are here!

But Saturday´s though night had a high price: there was no way to get up on time for a cruise through the Bosforous we had planned. Regreteable, since I was left with the feeling that Istanbul has a lot to offer and I missed it. We spent the day doing nothing, smoking pipes, getting confused when meeting each other and with hangover. Absolutely nothing to remark about the day. For the night year´s eve Julia had arranged a very good plan, a typical Turkish restaurant had been booked and the idea was to eat some grapes in the house at 12 (Spanish tradition). But and this point things started to get wrong, the Tel Aviv – Moscow – Bucharest - Stockholm connexion had a messy result. While the rest of the people was heading for the restaurant, in which we had to arrive early, these four assholes decided to stay home for having the last drink. But this was not enough and, at a certain point, we had the nasty idea of forgetting about the dinner and just join them for the dessert. So we left the house very late and very drunk and here is when the mess started. Among with other ethylic state we had every kind of problems. Offline phones, confusion when finding the places to meet… A real mess, we pretty fucked up Julia´s dinner and ended up, the four of use, disconnected from the others. Eventually and seen it was impossible to get in touch with the others, we assumed we should spend the night at our own and, to be honest, in the end it happened to be very funny. We met three very friendly Turkish girls (hello Figen!) with whom we celebrated the entering of the new year with flares (apparently the typical thing to do in Turkey). They took us to the best places and the truth is that we had a very very funny night. As there is one hour time difference between Turkey and Spain we celebrated two times. We ended up in a very cool Turkish club where the lights went off for a while. The place had a few floor and there was a music band playing. One of the highest moments of the night occurred when I climbed to the stage and almost stole the microphone from the singer to offer my particular version of “Para bailar la bamba”. There is a video of this that I will only show to people willing to pay big money. By the time it was 12 pm Spanish time we were desperately asking the waiter for drinks that we needed in 2 minutes. No grapes, no nothing, this new year started with a drink on my hands. 2006 has definitely been an original year when talking of special dates: apart from the Turkish New Year´s Eve I just told you, I spent my birthday alone in Bangkok and Christmas night in San Francisco surrounded by globetrotters. But, thinking now, and even though the night happened to be very funny, I am very sorry we could not meet with the others. Besides, Nuria had a very bad time cause she needed to catch a flight early in the morning and we had the keys of the apartment and were unreachable. A little messy but luckily we reunited in the flat on time and, after the well deserved scolding, we could restore the good ICEX vibrations (at least I think so). As can be seen in the pictures we slept very close to each other

The fantastic 4

Javi fell in love

Hats

Turkish girls!

Before finishing the post, I have to speak about the turkish bath, better known as Hamman. Pretty curious thing, first you lay down in a huge and hot stone, like if you were a steak on the grill. Then this guy comes, puts soap all over your body and rub you with an special sponge to open your skin and all that stuff, at the same time he is massaging your body. The truth is that, once you manage to ignore that fact that the one touching you all over is a big guy with moustache, the experience happens to be very relaxing. In the end you get a shower and they take you to another room where you lay in a bed and you get another massage. It would even say I liked it more than the thai massage, I mean the “normal” thai massage, I didn’t try the “other” one So I ended up very “exfoliated” and clean.