Rhodes BABY

As you may remember me mentioning in a previous post - me and my boyfriend Ryan booked a holiday to Rhodes to celebrate our first anniversary together. I wrote about the fears I had for something going wrong and I wrote about the excitement I had, especially for the hotel we had booked.

If you can't already tell - we are back alive and kicking, with only a few minor things going wrong, but definitely feeling the holiday blues as the night draws in... 

So as we sit here looking at our holiday photos for the billionth time - I thought I would post a quick blog review on Rhodes, Faliraki and most importantly The Kouros Exclusive - which I have to say, blew us away. 

For all you normal humans who aren't totally obsessed with Geography like me - Rhodes is an island located off the coast of Greece in the Aegean sea. It is northeast of Crete, southeast of Athens and just off the coast of Turkey. Shaped like a spear head, it is actually only 1,400 square kilometres in total. It only has one airport - so you're pretty set for getting there.

Faliraki (as you can see from the above) is situated on the North East coast of Rhodes. It used to be very popular for 'party holidays' back in the day - think Magaluf or Malia now, but way more wild (seriously) - it has now died right down after the locals and governing body in Faliraki got fed up of the tourist's behaviour and demanded things changed. These days it still has a lot of bars, clubs. shops and restaurants and a 'strip' designed to cater for tourists (and there are still a lot of lads and girls holidays out for a wild time) but is clean, tidy and really pleasant - even at night. 

The beach is spotless, with a stunning clear blue sea, delicious restaurants where you can eat whilst the sun sets and quite possibly the hottest sand I have ever experienced in my life - it was brilliant to see everyone walk, well - sprint, from their sun loungers to the sea to avoid burning their soles. And there are numerous hidden jewells such as Anthony Quinn Bay with it's deep emerald water - only accessible by boat or by trekking on foot for a while. We were lucky enough to get on board a diving boat that dropped us off on a mini cruise around these coves - meaning we could dive/snorkel in each one and experience the secluded beauty. 

We stayed in the most wonderful hotel - The Kouros Exclusive. They made us so incredibly welcome right from the second we arrived, with advice on where to go and visit and how to get there, what food and drink to try, surprise cocktails and best of all.....the treat of being upgraded to two suites during the week as they got wind of our anniversary. 

Each night we went and had cocktails on the terrace next to the pool as you can see from the photo just above before we either had dinner there (the food is so fresh it's to die for) or went for a wander in the town to have a look at whatever took our fancy. We never stayed out too late as we didn't want to run into the drunken groups - so we headed home to top-up the after sun each night and either sit out on our cushion or watch a film in English (with greek subtitles) on the tv with a glass of wine. 

Faliraki has it's own water park - which is either a short bus or taxi ride away - the taxi's are extortionate unless you demand the meter to be used, so make sure if you do go - make sure you ask for the meter to be switched on before you ask for your destination so you don't get ripped off. Anyway, the water park was one of the best days we had - and we bumped into some friend's of mine from college - of all the places and 2000 miles from home there they were! We got ridiculously burnt and scared ourselves silly - but it was soooo much fun and I would recommend it to anyone! 

We also managed to fit in a visit to Rodos - the capital 'city' of Rhodes which is entirely walled, with hundreds and hundreds of Taverna's, stalls and gelatto shops - vivid colours and flavours every where you turned. There are also really interesting ruins that you can climb to get a great view of the stunning water there - although they smell of wee..
We also dreamt of fame and fortune whilst we looked at all of the yachts docked in the bay...

All in all - we fell in love with the entire place and will be returning as soon as possible to enjoy the parts we simply didn't have the time to get around to doing - but I would recommend going 100000000%

Where else do you recommend going on holiday to?

Lots of love, Emily-Rose xoxo

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Chop Chop

So after years and years of having the same long-ish, lank, boring hairstyle.... I recently took the plunge and lopped a good 6-8 inches of dead (and I mean split ends galore dead) hair off of my head!

And let me tell you, it felt gooooooood.

I hadn't realised, but I had been using my hair as some sort of wispy shield to hide behind, often taking that to the next level by being stupid enough to get a thick blunt fringe put in just as I had managed to grow my other fringe back out again. (DON'T GET OFFENDED - I love thick full fringes - I just love them on anyone but me!!) meaning that I literally had a massive piece of hair directly covering the majority of my face. I would be constantly faffing around with it, trying to tame it, trying to bring it forward so it looked longer or covered a spot on my chin. 

I once got so self conscious about the fact I thought I had a massive five-head (that's a very large forehead...get the joke?) that I even..... used a mixture of bronzer and brown eyeshadow to make my hair line seem lower. The shame. 

But, in reality, I really didn't suit it. My hair was always too naturally thick, dry and frizzy to pull any long style off, it looked lank after a few hours and trying to put it up was a nightmare because really, when you try a youtube tutorial out on yourself it doesn't magically give you the model's face too as I found out....therefore it looks like a pile of poop plopped on your noggin. But still, I soldiered on for a good 8 years trying to grow it as long as I possibly could and spent every day envious of anyone with longer hair, more interesting styles etc etc 

Apart from the fact that my hair seemed to know it's true destiny and would therefore never grow any longer than a good boob-grazing, not quite mermaid hair length. The ends would split just below my shoulders no matter how much care I took to avoid it and it would never do what it was told.

Then I went and damaged it even more by having a dip-dye done. Let's all be honest, it looked ridiculous, my hair does not take well to being dyed lighter and will immediately aim to go as putrid orange/yellow as it can (old friends from school may remember that one fateful day I arrived through those gates with a highlighter orange barnett after thinking it would be a good idea to go blonde.... it didn't last any more than that one horrible day) 

Anyway, after having a rubbish start to this year - I, very unlike me, went a bit wild. I went to a new hair dressers, I sat down and told her to take off as much as she wanted as long as it looked good and all the split ends were gone. Girls everywhere are reading this and are open mouthed with horror I can imagine, and I

was too on the inside and I think the hairdresser, who had gorgeous long hair (which suited her...darn it) nearly threw up at the thought of being the one to put her scissors into action.

But she did....and I LOVED it.

I didn't realise how liberating it would feel to no longer have hair to hide behind. It had life. It was shiny, bouncy and not a ruddy split end in sight. It was me - short and bubbly! Now a few weeks on from that glorious day, I already feel desperate to get it cut again - its now grazing my shoulders!!!!!! 

So if you're teetering on the scissor edge trying to make up your mind whether or not to take the risk and have it cut - do it. It's amazing. And if you don't like it, magically - it will grow back!! :)

Lots of love, Emily-Rose xoxo

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