''Are you ready to drink and eat drunk stuff?''

Always, Tolga, always.

After the ferry back from Asia, the boys were excited to take us to their favorite Istanbul region, Taxsim - the most modern city center in Istanbul. They warned us that Taxsim would be slow on a Monday night compared to Saturdays where you can barely walk through the streets. Well, despite the day, it was very lively. Although, it was lively in a way I had not expected.

We were walking along the street filled with shops, bars and nightclubs, Turkish people shopping, drinking and socializing - we could have been in any city in America. But then, all the sudden, we would hear the call to prayer, and realize just down the street, or beyond the next building, there were Turkish people who lived a completely different, much more conservative life. It's amazing that these people in Istanbul, despite their vast and extreme differences, backgrounds and cultures, exist together every day, side-by-side. Now, I don't know the internal conflicts, but based on what Bahadir and Tolga told us, the biggest problem is the city's lack of order and structure which makes it slightly chaotic, but at the same time, eminently liveable. If a Turkish woman who goes to Mosque everyday and wears a Burka can live next to a Westernized Turkish college student who goes to brunch in sweats, hungover, throwing up in the bathroom (true story) - why can't the rest of us get along?

So we walked throughout the area, looking at the shops, the candy stores (discovered Turkish Delights), and finally, much to the boys relief, settled at a bar. Entering into the door of what looked like an apartment building, and walking up the ragged steps, I had no idea what to expect. I did not, however, except a posh bar named Leb-i derya with huge glass windows and a deck overlooking most of Istanbul. No wonder the boys were so eager to get us that drink! The view was so beautiful that, despite the dropping nighttime temperature and expensive drinks (24 Turkish Lira for a Martini = approx EUR11 = approx USD15 = ridiculous for Turkey where everything is cheaper), we ended up staying there for a few hours, talking about politics and philosophy and the differences in languages.

The sophistication and beauty was tempered with an incident involving Suzanne and the bathroom that I will refrain, for her sake, from writing about - but I must say it provided us with at least 48 hours of amusement. Actually, I'm still amused. Suzanne you crack me up.

After the drinks and the incident, we decided it was time for "drunk stuffs." First, we stopped by a late-night restaurant for Kimpur. Imagine a baked potato bar with an extra (extra) large baked potato and about 20 different toppings. Not just cheese, bacon, and chives, but creamed corn, olives, sausage and tomato mixture, mushrooms, beet salad, etc. Well, you are allowed to choose 7 toppings, so we chose for the boys a mixture we deemed disgusting even before it was topped with both mayonnaise and ketchup. Little did we know, the boys were going to force us to try this horrible concoction. And we did....and we actually liked it. Not in the, ''I love chocolate cake and would eat it everyday'' way; but in the, ''I expected to gag when the food hit my lips, and I actually ate the whole thing'' way.

After the baked potato from hell, we stopped at the street stands for the #1 Istanbul drunk food: Seafood. Now if the baked potato didn't make you throw up after a night of drinking, this most certainly will. First, there were shellfish (either mussels or oysters) stuffed with a spiced rice mixture. Pretty tasty, but not for an alcohol-filled stomach. Then there was fried fish on a stick, topped with a cream sauce and shoved into a roll. That one maybe I could handle eating after a few beers. The last ''drunk stuff'' we tried was a sandwich filled with spiced ground meat. I won't go as far as delicious, but it was pretty damn good. Until the boys informed us we were eating sheep's intestines. Mmmm....

A Turkish beer to wash all that down, and we were ready for bed.