Back to Istanbul; last night in Turkey

And we were off to Kayseri airport to catch an evening flight back to Istanbul.  The Kayseri airport is super tiny and reminded me a lot of the Vieques airport when I visited Puerto Rico earlier this year.  Security was pretty tight tho - they stopped me after seeing my curling iron on the x-ray machine.  Asked me to take it out and questioned my use of it.  After I motioned to my hair, the man snickered and shooed me away.  What did he think?  That it was a weapon or vibrator?

After arriving in Istanbul, we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and went back to Taksim.  Remember?  The fun area?  It was around 11pm and the streets were PACKED!  We stopped in for a lil' pudding dessert that had shredded chicken in it.  I had to try it and disappointingly, it was not bizarre at all.  Damn.  We then noticed that all these vendors were selling mussels on the main Istiklal street.  Of course we had to try it.  So the guy we bought from (kinda sexy, I'm not gonna lie - that's for you Tina) opened up each mussel to reveal yellow rice mixed in with mussel chunks.  He then fed it to us.  Hot.  And delicious.

The highlight of the night was getting to see my tango teacher Metin!  I learned tango from Metin in NYC for over a month and his class was the reason why I fell in love with the dance.  I was disappointed when he went on his teaching rotation in Istanbul but so psyched that we were able to catch up for a hot second.  He came to my hotel dressed in his best tango gear, thinking he was going to show me the Turkish tango scene!  I, on the other hand, could not stand the thought of my mom waiting up all night for me, worrying and possibly calling the Turkish police.  So, I declined, but it was great to see him anyway.