Antalya 2013. 4 Days of Pure Bliss (PART II)

Hey guys,

I hope you all enjoyed your weekends, back to boring Monday's again for those of you that are still working on in school. If you're on faux holiday like myself then Monday's are a lot more bearable aren't they? (I say faux because technically I don't finish school till I hand in my dissertation in September, booo). Anyways, as I promised I'm back to fill you in on how the other 2 days of my 4 days of bliss in Antalya went, let's resume on Friday morning shall we? :)

Woke up nice and early again but this time it wasn't to make the massive breakfast; Friday was the day of my mum's actual birthday and to kick off the day of celebrations we had a Service of Praise. There was singing and dancing to the Most High as well as a short sermon by one of her best friends before a select few people got to give speeches/tributes. (Obviously mine was the best, it made people teary-eyed! Ha!) After all of that we were treated to a lovely brunch and some cake.

Mummy looking gorgeous in pink & silver! Check out that gele!

                                    

Apologies for the blurry pictures above, they were taken by my iPhone which I will never compare to my camera again! Especially on zoomed in pictures. Once again after brunch and gathering everyone together to slap on some of Ibi's sun screen (yes, black people do need sun screen!) we headed back down to the beach for our waterfall tour and some ringo. The waterfall tour was supposed to take place on Thursday with the rest of our beach day activities but the guy kept telling us that his boat was due to arrive any moment and it never did arrive on Thursday before we had to leave! Because of this we were pretty skeptical about his antics and I wouldn't have been surprised if he just didn't turn up the next day as well, especially since we had already paid him! Lol. But I guess the Turkish don't have too much 419 blood in them because he turned up on time and with refreshments for us during our trip!

There was a little bit of a wait before we could actually get on the boat and I really wanted to try wake-boarding; I know fellow blogger Afam of The Ramblings of a Mad Man, does it quite often and the pictures looks like such fun! I hear it's quite difficult though? After hearing how difficult it was and not particularly wanting to belly flop in the water, my cousins and I opted for the Great Mable which is pretty much a massive float with handles attached for gripping on tight for dear life!

After getting a suitable adrenaline rush and a little wet, the boat was loaded and ready to take us on our waterfall tour. There were four in total and each one was bigger than the next but the pictures all kind of looked the same so I only put up two of them.

This one was the smallest of them and was also the first one we saw, I was a bit disappointed with it because I didn't know what was yet to come! Also can I just say, how awesome is the colour of that water?? Mediterranean Sea at it's finest!

Excuse my cousins head in this shot, lol. There were some pretty deep crevices in the nearby cliffs. I guess this is where all the pebbles on the beach are formed or something by some erosion process.

We finally got to the big one and it was pretty exciting to see! You could feel the mist that was being created from quite a distance away. I know it's no Niagra Falls but I've never been this close to a waterfall before so I'd say it was quite cool!

So cool we even took a group picture! Haha.

Weirdly enough we didn't see any marine life at all throughout the tour which was a bit disappointing but at the same time a great relief! I don't know how I'd have reacted if I noticed anything bigger than a goldfish casually swimming around our little boat! After the tour I went back to the hotel because I really just needed to rest before the activities of the birthday party!

Instead of just lazing about in my room though I decided that a spa moment would be in order, especially as I couldn't see any other time to enjoy the facilities. When in Turkey, do as the Turkish do and so I opted for a Turkish bath (hamam) followed by a full body massage. I don't have any pictures of the spa time because 1. I was too relaxed to be bothered about my camera and 2. It would have been very explicit photos because in the hamam you lie on a slab like the one in the picture below and a masseuse comes to scrub you and bath you, haha. Oh and there are other people being bathed at the same time as you, lol. Luckily for me I had my cousins so no strangers odd bits to stare at. It was extremely cringe-worthy at first but the girls were very professional and I fell into a trance afterwards. Oh plus you get to wear a paper thong. **giggles**

After the exfoliating bath and the amazing oil massage it was already time to head upstairs to get ready for the Dinner & Dance. Lord knows I would have lived in that spa if I had the chance! Lol. So I got dressed, did my make-up and tried to do something cute with my unruly 15 weeks post relaxer hair! The end result was something like this:

And I felt pretty fly until I saw my mother looking like this! She literally looked flawless and not at all of age, I better be looking like this when I'm at that age; the genes are somewhere inside me. Can I get an amen?!?!

There was a delicious 6 course meal and some other entertainment including this belly dancer who was trying to seduce my brother with her fingers. Lol.

I realised that I have absolutely no pictures of any of the food we had all through the time there which is really quite poor but I guess there was always something more interesting going on around me. After a night filled with drinking and dancing the crowd eventually thinned out and we all went to bed looking forward to our last full day in the dreamy city of Antalya.

My goodness can I just stop here and say this post feels really really long?! I feel like I've been typing away for absolute ages! Thank you for making it this far... It's the final day now, Saturday! I'm sure you're used to us waking up bright and early and heading for the massive breakfast by now, but on this day we found out breakfast ended at 10.30 and not 10. Can I get a whoop whoop for an extra 30 minutes in bed?? Especially after that Friday night we just had!

Saturday was a really simple day, we went on a boat cruise which featured the waterfall tour! (Had I known I would have saved my money!) and got to go swimming in the sea. Sadly when the yatch stopped moving about half of the party started feeling extremely sea sick from all the bobbing about so we couldn't really swim for that long before we had to head back to shore.

Pirates watching over us to keep us safe from the other pirate ships!

Ibi & Iretidee. Sunglasses and Cheeses Crew!

The mummies wouldn't let us swim without life jackets. They still don't trust our swimming skills even after all that money on lessons from when we were kids! Lol.

Sadly, Saturday was our very last day as the flight on Sunday was at 8 a.m. or some equally ridiculous time! The only thing I regret was not having more time to explore the actual city (I went to the beach instead, typical huh?) so it's definitely on my list of places to go back to! Here's saying bye to Antalya; my four days of pure utter bliss!

See my brother Modee the professional photo bomber! <3

Hope this has provided some sort of escapism for an otherwise boring Monday lunchtime. Enjoy the rest of your day, I'm off to continue with school work too :(.

Ciao!

Reni x

DWT Manchester: Rihanna Stan

I'm so irritated right now! Completely besides myself, want to know why? It's simple really. Because I feel like blogging!! You're probably thinking "So do it then, what's the big deal?" but the big deal is this. I have a specific set of pictures that I am very keen on sharing with you which I took with my proper camera after a couple of photo walks with friends, but then I got home and got ready to transfer the pictures to my laptop, it was then I realised I had two major setbacks. One, my camera USB cable seems to have disappeared on me, I've never transferred pictures off it before so I'm not even sure there was a USB in the box but that seems like a ridiculous notion! So I switched to plan B; get the memory card and just put it straight into my computer, thwarted again! There is NO memory card reader slot on my laptop!

Can you see how this would be very frustrating? Now until I either buy a USB cable or find a way to connect a memory card reader to my laptop then I'm stuck with no pictures! :(

Do not despair though for I have a back up plan! Today we can broach one of my favourite topics... Rihanna!! :)

For those of you who don't know, I am a proud Stan! There is nothing else to say about it other than it is true and I will admit it again unashamedly any day, anytime. I don't really understand what there is to hate about her, I can understand feeling indifferent though. I'm indifferent about a lot of things, but Rihanna is not one of them! She's young, she's beautiful and she's rich! Haha. She also lives her life the way she wants too and though she's a bit extra sometimes, like the stan I am, I forgive her for her muchness and blame it on the fact that she was a star from such a young age! Almost 10 years now to be precise.

So as I have now confessed where I stand maybe you will understand this post a bit more! You see, last month I went to the Diamonds World Tour in the MEN Arena! Whoop whoop! It was my second time in the arena, but my first time in the standing area. The decision to go to the show was extremely whimsical, I think I got my tickets the night before or something because I decided I couldn't let her pass right through my city and not see her! So at about 4pm, Tomz and I got ready to start the entire process that will eventually see us to the front and centre of the stage!

We got dressed and ready to hit the road.

I have no idea what she's wearing and I didn't think to ask as this was never meant to be an outfit post! But I'm wearing TopShop from head to toe, lol, except my shoes which are Nike Blazers and my belt by Ferragamo.

As we got closer to the arena you could really start to feel the buzz, there were people giving out some pretty awesome stick on tattoos which were actually infused with the scent of her new fragrance Nude. I loved the concept! Rih and all her tatts, I was completely unadventurous though and simply stuck it on my hand! Lol.

After a lot of standing around and waiting patiently with palpable excitement (approximately 4 hours worth!) the show finally started! Whooooop! She was opened for by 2 DJ's who together make up a group called GTA (i forget what it stands for) and they were awesome! For the first twenty minutes anyways.

You see I'm pretty sure that whenever you are waiting for your favourite artist to come and rock the stage, nothing is more annoying than some DJ's playing the same type of music over and over again! I don't even know what the genre would be called but I guess their tagline is in fact 'death to genres' sadly it was still all one genre all house/dubstep/electro/drum and bass like. I was quite disappointed and very very tired from standing for hours now but I still managed to keep my smile, somewhat.

And then fiiiiiinally! At about 9.30, the queen Rih finally comes unto stage and it was pretty crazy from there! Most of the night from this point is a bit of a blur, I was so high off her energy and loving every single song she performed singing and dancing around like crazy! Unfortunately (or fortunately) the arena was packed! Stadium Status baby! So there was no room to take some action shots of Tomz and I dancing, there was plenty of room to take pictures of Rih though and she looked amazing! Here are shots of her outfits from the night, she changed so many times!

This is by far my favourite outfit of her! She looks like Iron Man's long lost girlfriend, I loved it!

Literally flawless is she not? And I was so up close to the stage as well! It was amazing, what would have made it even more Rihdiculous would have been if I got to touch her when she came down to the crowd! Unfortunately I was about 1 person too far away from her! Boohoo :( All in all even though her vocals could do with some work she's a pretty amazing performer! "Where have you been" "Cockiness" "Diamonds" and "Rockstar 101" were amongst my favourite performances! She's coming back to Manchester again on Tuesday and I'm trying to decide if I want to see her again, I so would if I can convince just one person of her awesomeness and get them to shell out the cash. But for now it's peace out b*tches! (It wouldn't be a complete Rihanna post if I wasn't profane at least once! lol)

Reni x

Cheating Foodie

I’ve been cheating… On Insanity that is! After successfully completing the first three weeks as well! I was a bit disappointed but it didn’t happen entirely by choice! After Friday’s workout I noticed some pain in my right leg around my knee and knew that it wasn’t a sign of a good workout.  I figured it's probably from all the jumping and squatting especially in the plyometric workouts. For those who don’t know me I get really paranoid about certain things and damaging my knee is no different! I already know I have weak knees, the kind that hurt from sitting in one position for too long (Hello aisle seats and extra leg room on the plane!) I also can’t stand in one position for too long, especially in heels! (One of the reasons med school was just never for me! Not that they wear heels to med school… You catch my drift… lol) I got one of those knee brace things to wear during my workout and that seemed to help but by the next day the pain hadn’t gone away and to be honest I was too scared of doing permanent damage to try again! (In case you’re wondering I’m really not that tall. Taller than average for a girl I guess but still only 5’9”.)

Well apart from cheating on Insanity, I’ve also been cheating on my ‘clean’ diet. Four days in a row of Chinese food cannot be good for anyone! Although the one I had on Friday night was particularly delicious! It was at Princess Garden of Mayfair, London for one of my best friends 21^st birthday, the food there was soo good! Although as usual the waitresses were snappy and tried to rush us. Poor women, everyone knows you cannot rush Nigerians; we do things at our own time to our own taste. We are done when and only when WE decide to be done! Some of the other staff were lovely though; especially the guy who wouldn’t stop topping up everyone’s wine glass, he was determined to show us a good time! LOL. It was a really great evening with a chilled house party to end it all. OMG I got introduced to the best cherry liqueur ever! Does anyone know where I can get some??!! (Any brand! I’m desperate).

As of today though my knee feels a lot better and I’ve looked up some stretches to add to the end of my workouts to strengthen that area so I’m jumping back on the Insanity wagon, and heck no I’m not starting again! I’d rather die! LOL. I’d start from the beginning of Week 4 and hopefully by my next fit test in about 2 weeks there’d be even more improvement! Wish me luck guys… Also, I found one partner! Anyone else care to join us?? Leave a comment below!

Outfit of Friday Night

With love,

Reni x