Antalya 2013. 4 Days of Pure Bliss

Hey guys!

So when I first thought of writing this post I thought I'd do a little outfit of the days, lookbook type thing but I decided against it because honestly, I'm just not that fashionable. I wear what I can to get by looking nice enough that I'm not called a tramp but I'm rarely ever the most fashionably dressed person in the room! I like comfort way too much. Nonetheless, I feel I must warn you, this post and the next one is FILLED with selfies and other random pictures of my different outfits, this was the first time in a long time that I was using my 'proper' camera so I got a bit snap happy. Some of the pictures are still taken with my iPhone though, I wonder if you'd be able to tell which ones. Anyways, let's get down to business.

At the end of June my beautiful mama had a big birthday to celebrate and she decided to do so by taking a well deserved holiday with her favourite people to the beautiful city of Antalya, Turkey. Antalya is one of those places that I had literally never heard of before my mum mentioned it in passing and although I was sad that Istanbul was out of the question, I trusted her choice completely. Also not going to Istanbul meant that all the jokes about being "taken" a la "Taken 2" finally had to stop! Haha. We arrived on a gorgeous Wednesday afternoon even though I'm quite sure the weather there is always gorgeous, having just been in rainy Manchester, I was a very happy bunny for the change. The whole of the first day was spent exploring the hotel, Rixos Downtown, and taking pictures of any and everything that looked interesting!

The view from the elevator; I thought the interior of the hotel was fantastic! I felt like I was in some exotic paradise land!

The poolside was definitely my favourite area of the hotel even though I didn't get to spend too much time there, the days that followed were too action packed to have any real lazing about by the pool but I did manage it once!

I feel like my black hat is slightly reminiscent of Boj! Lol. Maybe it's just the picture.

This view of the hotel from the poolside is one of my favourite shots from the whole trip. Don't you just love how it looks like a massive ship! All the trees in the surrounding area make it look so gorgeous.

After wondering about the hotel and lounging by the poolside it was time to get ready for thew welcome dinner and drinks fiesta. Unfortunately by this time I was too tired to take any more blog-worthy pictures so we're going to have to skip on by to day 2, the Thursday. We woke up bright and early to make the massive breakfast buffet, quite unfortunately I found I don't really like turkish breakfast. There's just something about not having any sausages with a big breakfast that doesn't sit right with me, but fortunately they had some of the best American style pancakes I've ever tasted with a huge variety of toppings! Being well fed and well rested my cousins and I decided it was beach time!

Can I just say that the novelty of a pebble beach wears of very very quickly! Stepping in boiling sand is one thing but stepping on hot pebbles reminds me of that challenge that those crazy people do when they run across hot coal! We hopped, skipped and jumped until we reached the sanctity of deck chairs and umbrellas to protect us from the sun. Turkish people are extremely friendly, even when they are trying to rob you of all your money for extortionately priced umbrella's! The lovely man ended up giving us two for 'free'.

At the beach we got to go jet skiing and parasailing. Two things I've never done before; parasailing was a lot more calming than it looked and I was so sad I didn't have my camera up there with me to take pictures of the view from such a high vantage point, but truth be told I was so concerned with holding on to the harness that I doubt I could have taken any photos!

This jet-skiing picture was taken before the funniest part of the whole day at the beach. You see me over there, rocking my shades feeling like a real cool cat before Iya and I take off to the deep end of the water...

What you don't see is what happened a few minutes later when Iya was feeling like a formula one driver and I was egging her on to go faster and faster until she made a very swift left turn which saw me flying off the jet-ski and straight into the deep blue sea! It would have looked perfect on camera or slow motion tape; me flying off and thinking to myself that I needed to grab my sunglasses before they became property of the ocean floor and then water treading while I waited for Iya to realise I had fallen off and turn around to come and get me! In the 15 seconds it took her to realise I was gone I got terrified by the thoughts of any form of sea life, be it fish, whale or mermaid coming to say hello. Luckily there were none but I noticed how startlingly blue and clear the water was. Beautiful I tell ya.

We eventually made it back to shore and then back to the hotel where we had an hour or less to get ready for the pre-birthday party which was an all white affair at this lovely restaurant called Aura. While white is not my favourite colour in the world (read I'm far too clumsy/messy to wear white) and it took me forever to find an outfit, I was happy I finally found something that worked from Topshop!

Lil cuz Iretidee!

Just to clarify, I don't have a sister. But if you think that we look like twins you wouldn't be too far off the mark. We even had identical hairstyles until mine got soaking wet from the earlier dive!

Shortly after this picture was taken, several groups of locals ran up to my cousins and I begging if they could take pictures with us, I kid you not. I guess they don't see that many black people down in Antalya because one of the girls kept blowing us kisses from her passing car! It was very exhausting and strange indeed, I think that now if a celebrity ever said no to a picture with me I would just nod my head understandingly. And then day 2 was over.

I feel like this is one of the longest posts I've ever written and I may be wrong but it's pretty long! Thanks for making it to the end. Haha.

Enjoy your Friday night guys! I'd tell you about my Friday in Antalya in due time :)

Reni J x