Nigeria Trip // Day 9-Lagos Easter

We spent a lovely day in Ikoyi with my cousin and his family starting with Easter brunch at the Wheatbaker hotel. The brunch spread was quite extensive with continental cuisine on one side of the dining room and a buffet of Nigeria food on the other side. I have never seen two kids so excited to see salad, olives, cured meats and such. I guess 8 days of Nigeria food was their limit! The hotel itself was beautifully decorated, nicely kept and the service was on par with the nicer places in New York. Certainly it had to be because it plays host to mostly Nigerian elite and foreign nationals. The funny thing is its owned partially by someone we referred to as uncle, growing up, he was a family friend or a friend of my father..funny how times have changed and how life has changed since moving to New York. I sometime still wonder if moving to New York was a good move for our family, I feel like things could have turned out differently if we had stayed in Nigeria but no use in dreaming about the past right.

I sat at the kids table while the others all sat at a table adjacent to us. I think I was getting to be a bit overwhelmed by the trip myself. I hadn't spent this much time in such close quarters with everyone in a while. Mom had left early that morning and was on her way back to New York so it was really just me, my three sisters and our husbands and kids...oh and my cousin, DT.

Sim invited us back to his house for some chit chatting and several bottles of champagne which consisted of catching up on life and my aunt telling us to keep having kids before it was too late. She the best, she tells it like it is and doesn't hold back her thoughts. The kids played, his kids had never met us in fact I hadn't seen him since he moved back to Lagos after grad school. It was nice to finally meet his wife and kids. Its never enough time but we take what we can get. We spent so much time together growing up that it never seems like we've been away for so long.

I was intrigued that its a normal occurrence to perpetually have several bottles of chilled champagne in your refrigerator in Nigeria. This is proof for why Nigerians are said to consume the most champagne in the world..well I can understand that.