Notting Hill Carnival

Another reason I was glad I didn't go away over the long weekend was the Notting Hill Carnival. It is held every year on the august bank holiday and it is a festival where people from carribean descent come together and celebrate their lifestyles. It is also Number 99 in the Top 100! On a side note - I feel like Timeout should give me some money for all the plugging of the book I have been doing!

For those of us who get to attend are lucky enough to be treated to the many flavours of carribean food, carribean music, dance and all round shenanigans. The sad thing about this year was that due to the recent riots on London the festival had been toned down with its running hours shortened. Many people avoided it as they had predicted trouble so in terms of how big and exciting it had been in years past this one was fairly tame (or so I have heard).

Since I am not a huge fan of crowds and can often get claustrophobic me and Toni decided to hit it up early so that if there was trouble we could bail out. We got there around 12 and the Notting Hill tube station was already closed for safety so we walked from High Street Kensington and luckily for us it was a gorgeous day. As we arrived closer to the festival the roads became cordoned off and we were directed through a crowd by police. After about a 20 minute walk we finally made it to the edge of the festival and got our first look.

We wandered through all the little streets that were starting to fill with people listening and dancing to Caribbean music coming out of speakers piled high on top of each other. We also wandered through endless street vendors selling jerk chicken, roti, bbq'd corn and other yummy looking delights. There were propped up bars selling red stripe for £2 and street vendors selling whistels, horns and carribean paraphenalia.








For the most part we only saw tourists and other onlookers which was a bit disappointing until we hit the parade route. We were lucky yo get there just in time to see the beginning and we were treated to lots of costumes, music, dancing, drumming and singing. We even somehow managed to wander past the police barrier and get out onto the street which made for a few sneaky photos without the tops of peoples heads.





We soon got pushed back into the crowd and gave up on standing on our tippy toes (as we r both fairly short) so we went for a wander along to get some food. I grabbed a bbq'ed corn on the cob as we wandered thru and checked out all the options. We found a place in a little side street that sold 'the works' which included - rice, jerk chicken, vegetable curry, salad and a dumpling for £8. For the amount of scrummy food I got I would have to say it was a bargain.




After a good feed we decided to call it a day. As we wandered back through the crowds had started to thicken and there were lots tipsy people dancing and partying in the streets. Since Toni and I had done our fair share of drinking and dancing the night before we steered clear and went home to relax after a pretty busy, fun and tourist filled weekend.