Confession, Here I Come.

Hi all!

Just left Istanbul! Overall, definitely a great port.

Recap of the last couple days:

After the exhilarating Turkish bath experience, my friends and I took a motorboat tour that through the Bosphorus. The next day was spent almost entirely at the Grand Bazaar. Shopping has never been so exhausting! Having to haggle and bargain for every little thing you buy gets pretty tiring. On the bright side, I had about 7 cups of free tea. When you go into stores and are trying to decide whether or not to buy something, the owners usually offer you and your friends a place to sit and give you each a cup of tea to mull it over. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

While we were at the Bazaar, Carmella bought her brother a hookah, with the intention of sending it home since that was at the top of our prohibited items list for the ship. When we went to the post office, though, we found out that there was no cargo service. She’d paid about 100 bucks for it, so she was really upset about it. We sat down to eat and pulled the hookah out to examine it. We started taking it apart and realized that, although it was large, it was made up of a bunch of small pieces. Since we’d bought so much, we figured we’d try our best to sneak it on. The worst they’d do is make you throw it out, which is what she’d hafta do anyways if she couldn’t send it home. We strategically wrapped the pieces up separately and stuffed them into compartments of our bags.

When we got to the ship, we realized that the man checking bags was the super-intense, look in every nook and cranny guy. And he was even using scissors to cut open everything that was wrapped up. Crap. We were screwed. Nothing’s getting past this guy. As he started going through our bags, we were all holding our breath wondering when he was going to find the first piece of it. All of a sudden, I saw him pull out the long, skinny part that’s really decorated. He asked us what it was and one of us mumbled that it was a candle stick. Satisfied with this answer, he quickly interrogated us about having candles. Then, he went through the rest of our bags, and to our shock, he didn’t find anything else! Success! Getting something like that past ship security was quite the ego boost for us.

Later that night, we all got ready and headed to dinner at Taksim Square. Although we didn’t intend on doing anything beyond dinner, after a few beers, my friends were starting to think that going dancing might be fun. So, off we went, in search of one of the many dance clubs we’d heard about. We were wandering around aimlessly, so Katie decided to ask one of the hosts standing outside of a restaurant where the nearest club was. He was a nice old guy, and he offered to walk us over to it since it was just one street up.

We followed him to Club Purple, which looked to be pretty hoppin’. When we went in, he decided to have a beer with us. He sat down at our table and immediately took a liking to Carmella. He started asking us if Carmella was single and talking about how he was divorced, but wanted to find love. And this guy was OLD. Like almost Grandpa old. It was hilarious. And the pictures we have of he and Carmella are priceless. Sadly, 'old, creepy, Turkish man' isn't her type. Picky, picky.

While he was taking a break from hitting on Carmella, he pulled out his cell phone and called his uncle, or some guy that he referred to as his uncle. He passed around the phone so we could all say hi to whoever the dude on the other end was. Apparently, our hellos were well-received because, after hearing them, his “uncle” decided to come hang out with us too.  I’d been hoping that he meant that his nephew was coming, and he just didn’t know how to say it in English, but when his “uncle” got there, he turned out to be just another old guy…with a posse of more old guys. And we got the enjoyable task of entertaining them. Lucky us. 

After we’d had enough advances from gross old men to last us a lifetime, we went to the bar to pay for our tab. We had already realized that we didn’t have enough cash to cover our drinks since it was the last night and none of us had a lot of Turkish currency left. We figured one of us would just pay with a credit card, and we’d divvy things up later. When we went up to the bar, though, the bartender informed us that they didn’t take credit cards. What kind of club doesn’t take a credit card!? Crap. What now?

We looked over at all the creepy old men that we’d had to fend off all night, and they started waving, trying to get us over to dance with them. After a couple minutes of mulling it over, one of my friends leaned over the bar and asked the bartender if the old guys had a tab…and, sure enough, they did. What we did next probably should’ve landed us in a Turkish prison…but considering the fact that we couldn’t pay our bar tab…we had no other choice, but to tell the bartender that the old guys would be paying for our drinks. Then, we asked where the bathroom was, told the old men we'd be back...and instead of going to the bathroom, we bolted. And literally started running through the streets of Istanbul trying to get as far away from the club and the soon-to-be really pissed off old guys as quickly as possible. Probably not our finest hour…and I did feel kinda bad about it after… but it was the least they could do for us being forced to deal with their creepy advances all night, right? I’m sure my mother will be proud…

Since I felt so bad about it, I decided to go back to the bar and say sorry…okay, not really. But here it is now…Sorry that you’re out 200 bucks, old creepy Turkish men from Club Purple! Don’t worry…I’ll be heading straight to confession when I get back. After my night of sinfulness, I spent the next day doing wholesome things, like visiting mosques. Also, I uploaded pictures! Only through Spain, though…and not even all of them…but it’s something, at least!

I’m off to study for the economics test that I have tomorrow! Adios!