Taksim

Yesterday I had an exciting night out on the town, exploring the hip and bustling Taksim Square area. After a long bus ride due to epic rush-hour traffic, I met up with my Turkish teacher from Brown, Ferda, and walked along İstiklal Caddesi. The street is closed off to cars and lined with shops, so it's a great place to walk along. I didn't take many pictures, unfortunately, but I'll definitely be back soon (mm, shopping), possibly this weekend. The main street has tons of little side streets off of it, which have lots of cool, smaller shops and many places to drink and dance at night. After some excellent dinner (mm, risotto), we walked over to Galata Tower, a famous Istanbul landmark built back in the 14th century:

It supposedly has some pretty epic views from the top, but unfortunately we got there just when it was closing. Afterwards, we took a walk across the bridge over the Golden Horn to the "old city", where Sultanahmet and such are. The views were so beautiful, but unfortunately I fail at taking pictures at night, so nothing turned out nice enough to post here.

We hopped on a tram to take us back to Taksim Square, where we wandered around a vibrant Ramadan celebration, filled with booths selling jewelry, clothings, etc and some bands playing. We watched a band called Ayna for a bit, as they are apparently a famous Turkish rock band:

 

One of the coolest features was a booth doing ebru, or paper marbling. Paint is carefully manipulated on top of water or other fluids to produce beautiful pictures, which are then transferred onto paper:

It was a pretty excellent evening, and I look forward to exploring the Taksim area some more. I guess there's a reason that all the locals name it as the top place I should visit.