Valentine's Day

DALM | Valentine’s Day in Lagos

Diary Adventures of LagosMums: DALM | Valentine’s Day in Lagos

Valentines day is serious in Lagos. Shops offer lovers basket with your choice of healthy options or chocolate delicacies with a bottles of wine. Schools encourage the children to come to school in red and a gift for a classmate. Even some offices get involved in Valentine’s day asking you to pick a name from a hat and get the person a gift. The day is an array of everyone in various shades of red.

valentines day

A picture was making the rounds on blackberry that showed a man crying because two weeks before Valentines day the blackberry 10 from RIM was released. The joke being that there would be some expectant blackberry 10 recipients (wife or girlfriend) waiting for this new phone.

Do You Celebrate

Depending on where you are in your relationship or marriage you are either a die hard valentines day celebrant with the whole works – cards, gift exchange, celebration by going to dinner, movies or taking a trip. Or you are on the other extreme and not impressed by all the focus on spending and marking one so called day of love. But really, love should not be celebrated on just one day of the year.

Wherever you fall or whatever you believe you could not miss the love and the Valentines day atmosphere in the air. Some of us have evolved and don’t even remember to get our significant others a card…even if they remembered to get you a gift.

I have noticed that celebration of Valentines day has taken on an increased tempo over the years in Lagos. So here we are last minute on Valentines Day evening and we decide to go to dinner. After work we discuss the options a bit and venture out to our preferred restaurant for the evening, Sky Lounge at Eko Hotel.

On getting there we are greeted and welcomed by the waitress and asked if we made a reservation, which we had not. She politely tells us we therefore cannot dine at their restaurant. We don’t give up easily so we tell her that it is possible some people won’t turn up. She answers that all reservations have already paid up for their dinner in advance and therefore will surely turn up.  We look at ourselves realizing that lots of other people take this more serious than us we do. After this we leave and decide to try somewhere else….

Next Stop

Next stop was Talindo’s and after a feeble attempt to see if there is a free table for our non-reservation selves; we are told that there are no seats available. The only option was  upstairs which is also outdoors. We go upstairs, though humid and not very comfortable we take a seat. Lagosians know what is good sha. The upstairs was empty while the nice cozy downstairs dining areas with the air conditioning and candle lights was fully reserved and packed with diners. After one look at the “set” menu where we were being offered suya at triple the cost per head; plus the humidity we decided this was not the place for us.

We considered trying another proper restaurant but I told DH that I was not in the mood to be turned away again. Not taking no for an answer and determined not to return home without dinner; we decide to try a likely “non-reservation” type restaurant.

So we end up at Johnny Rockets and voila we do not get asked if we made a reservation.  We got seated promptly and very quickly get our burgers that were in heart shaped buns. The waiters gave us a nice touch with an electric slide performance.

Phew who knew Valentines day in Lagos was such serious business! Reservations are the way forward.

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