{"id":462,"date":"2008-08-30T19:42:30","date_gmt":"2008-08-30T17:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/?p=462"},"modified":"2008-08-30T19:44:59","modified_gmt":"2008-08-30T17:44:59","slug":"party-time-in-taksim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/30\/party-time-in-taksim\/","title":{"rendered":"Party time in Taksim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Yesterday night we met up with a &#8216;bunch&#8217; of Erasmus students (30) in the Taksim district of Istanbul for a night out on the town. My roommate and I headed from our dorms to the park, where we went into a cable lift over the park towards Taksim. Once there, I was amazed with how modern everything was. What a lively district! I&#8217;d been wondering where all the cool, young people hang out in Istanbul and <em>this <\/em>is one of the places.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-463 aligncenter\" title=\"One of the many small streets in the Taksim area\" src=\"http:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/taksim.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"356\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/taksim.jpg 475w, https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/08\/taksim-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 475px) 100vw, 475px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Taksim&#8217;s main square is a popular place for big public events such as New Year&#8217;s Eve celebration and parades. It used to be an important center for demonstrations also, but after a few incidents in the sixties and seventies the Turkish government decided to introduce a ban on these demonstrations on the square.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After meeting up with a few fellow students from Poland and Spain, we decided to head out and grab a bite. We headed down \u0130stiklal Caddesi (Avenue) which is Istanbul&#8217;s main shopping streets and is visited by over 3 million people per day during the weekends. In the sidestreets there are many bars and restaurants, but the area also has a lot of other sights to see which you can read about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/%C4%B0stiklal_Avenue\" target=\"_blank\">on Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">After having some food, we walked down one of the streets and came past a Nargila place. This traditional waterpipe has been a very important element in the social life of Turkish people over the course of history and they are smoked to socialize. One Nargila, five teas and a water only cost us 11 lira total, which is around 6 or 7 euros. Great stuff!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Then we headed to a bar about which I won&#8217;t speak, because the best thing you can do is just head over to the area yourself one day and explore all that it has to offer. It&#8217;s incredibly vibrant, even more so than what I&#8217;ve seen in cities like Paris or London!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Like to read more about Turkey, Istanbul\u00a0and my travels in the region? Subscribe by <a href=\"http:\/\/basbasbas.com\/blog\/feed\/\" target=\"_blank\">RSS<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.feedburner.com\/fb\/a\/emailverifySubmit?feedId=1139007&amp;loc=en_US\" target=\"_blank\">click here for email updates<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday night we met up with a &#8216;bunch&#8217; of Erasmus students (30) in the Taksim district of Istanbul for a night out on the town. My roommate and I headed from our dorms to the park, where we went into a cable lift over the park towards Taksim. Once there, I was amazed with how [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,7],"tags":[380,331,500,498,180,497,362,499],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leisure","category-life","tag-erasmus","tag-istanbul","tag-istiklal-caddesi","tag-nargila","tag-party","tag-taksim","tag-turkey","tag-waterpipe"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}