Starting with a Bang!

Don't ask me how, but landed a ticket into İstanbul's most supreme parties Thursday night! It was the opening of one of the city's premier clubs - SUADA (translation: su = water, ada = island). This party was so hot that its launch was announced on the cover of Turkiye's mainstream newspapers Sabah with the headline reading 'Suada's doors now open for entertainment!'. Now I've been to my share of Hollywood shindigs but this one surely topped them all.

I got a call from a colleague Serhat, who is the Sports Director of a fru-fru fitness facility called Hillside City Club - part of the Hillside corporation (just to give you an idea of how big this company is - they also own high-end spas, hotels and beach clubs - its massive!). They hosted the party. Serhat had an invite to the launch and told me simply to dress in white (which apparently was the theme of the event) and show up at 8pm by the boat. Wait! What boat... I thought as he hung up.

Uhm... yeah, okay. I had no idea what he was talking about. All I knew was that I had to go. (I had to go for the sake of my blog readers...)



With the help of my mom, who is more familiar with the area than I am, I arrived safely after a 1.5 hour taxi ride (traffic was crazy during rush hour). The place was a sea of white. People dressed to the nines. Open air. Open bar. Live latin band. Weather in the 70s. Fireworks. I'd never seen anything like it! (Check out the pics here)

I met a lot of people both from the fitness-side and business-side of Hillside. And ended up witnessing one of the greatest parties of my life. Vegas has nothing on İstanbul...