Avustralya, Gondolas, and İstanbul ve Kedileri

Today was a great day. Mattie and I hung out, just the two of us. It was really good because we got to rant and complain about everything that had been annoying us, then enjoy a day being goofy. The day started with me doing my hair (insert gasp here). I know! I've gotten soooo lazy here, I almost never wear it down. Actually? I didn't today either. But I did curl sections. Anyways. I got to Taksim before Mattie so I met her in the Metro station. While I was waiting I was examining the transportation maps, and decided that today was the day we should ride the "eggs" as Mattie and I refer to them as.

So, as soon as Mattie arrived and agreed to my excellent plan, we set off to buy some snacks (breakfast in my case.. mmm! Simit!) at Simit Sarayı and then walked to the gondola station closest to Taksim. We couldn't figure out how to pay, and the guy eventually came out of his little booth and we asked and he said "You can't pay here. You pay on the other side." This was waaay confusing, so we left and walked over to the other side. This time we went through a park, rather than past the giant disco ball (not that I didn't *try* and convince Mattie that we should go the weird route..). This was a very pleasant park, so we stopped and ate half of our snacks. Then, back up the other hill (the reason there are gondolas in the first place is because people are too lazy to go down into a valley and then back up the next hill to get to Taksim) to the station there. This time there was definitely a place to pay, and we gladly did so to get to ride the best form of transportation in İstanbul! We took picutres and ate cookies on the ride over.

Then we went back to Taksim and I bought Turkish CDs and then the sweater I really wanted. It's a white hoodie that says "İstanbul ve kedileri" on it, which means İstanbul and the cats (since cat was one of the first words I learned, I HAD to have it). I loved it so much that when I tried it on and it fit, instead of taking it off I had the lady at the counter cut the tag out to beep it through, and just wore it all day. Hehe.

While we were in Mavi Jeans we saw a huge protest (people here are not happy about Palestine), so when the coast was clear, we booked it down a side street and used this obscure metro entrance.. Where we saw another beautiful mosaic on the wall and decided that since we were there, we may as well get a photo or two! This amused the security guard to no end. Then the metro to Şişli where we saw "Avustralya". It was in English with Turkish subtitles, like James Bond was. AND like in James Bond, we missed important/exciting/touching lines because someone spoke in a foreign language and we didn't understand the subtitles.
"Hmm.. I think he said something about waiting?" "Yeah.. and 'sing' was in there.."

Oh! And we were the only ones in the theater with any emotions. Through the first half of the movie we were laughing and laughing (when Nicole Kiddman stuck out her tongue? hahahaha) and the rest of the theater was silent. Then, the second half we cried pretty much the entire time. There was an intermission again, but at this theater the seats didn't recline. = (

Altogether, it was a good day in İstanbul. Narrowly missed a protest, successfully spoke in Turkish on multiple occasions (including asking a giant eggplant if I could take a photo with him), and spent time with one of my closest friends here.

-Maeghan