In the mood for the weekend... fasil!

I thought this post was suiting today since the sun is shining, the weekend is here, I'm ready for some fun...(which actually means for me a weekend of lots of drawing and designing - I'm working on a wallpaper at the moment and it's so fun!)

But we do occassionally do other things!  Recently we had a great time out - Turkish style!  Fasil!  (it is actually written without the dot on the i)  We left Yashar at Baba Anne's (Grandma's) and joined some good friends of ours for their 30th at Garibaldi  a restaurant/fasil venue in Taksim.  I loved it! 

I didn't manage to get any good photos on the night (too dark) but the Garibaldi website has a gallery of images if you want to check it out.  (It was better on the night than some of those photos would suggest though!)

Fasil is actually a type of Ottoman classical music but it is now often used in Turkey to refer to a night out of great Turkish music, dancing and singing!   If you are a visitor to Turkey I definitely recommend going to a good fasil venue rather than touristy belly dancing!  The band playing included one of my husbands favourite instruments, the kanun.  This is the instrument on the right (photo is from the Enstruman Dersleri site).

The room was packed with people sitting at long tables, with lots of yummy meze and the wine and raki was free flowing.  Half way through the band playing the first song people were up dancing and singing along and before long most of the room was up dancing and waving their arms around passionately!  The room was dimly lit with candles and had pictures up of the 'grand-daddy's' of the style of music including Ismail Dede Efendi (Sir Grand Father Ismail) - that is him on the CD cover on the left from ottomanstore.com 

I used the evening to perfect my 3 fail safe dance moves so that I was dancing like a local - which our friends thought were equally impressive and hilarious!

Have a great weekend everyone!