The Festival

Melissa (another exchange teacher from the States; she's in South London) and I decided to meet up and go to the Notting Hill Festival Sunday.

The train, the bus and the subway all factored into our getting to the same place, but we did it. Once we got to Notting Hill, thank goodness for her navigational skills. I would have gotten us hopelessly lost.

Here we are at the beginning of the parade route:


We went on Family Day, meaning that there were lots of children in the parade of dancers (and VERY LOUD music).

These tea cups were really cute. I didn't take any pictures of the grown ups in the parade who were already swigging out of bottles (you know, at the Family Day parade, at 12:30 in the afternoon).

You can't really see it unless you click on it, but the face painting was really lovely on some of the women and children. The costumes were very elaborate at times.

Some of the dancing was very... um... energetic. Again, I avoided documenting the couple grinding their way down the parade route.

This little girl was my favorite. We were at the very beginning of the route, and it was a pretty long parade (at least 3 hours). All along, we kept seeing the participants dancing and eating at the same time. A sandwich here, a samosa there. This little one was trying so hard to get something off the chicken leg, but instead just kept coming away with a bit of skin. When she finally got a piece of actual meat, she dropped it. Sometimes you just can't win.

Right behind us was a pretty big food set up:

Is there anything better than street food? I was surprised to see people buying beer too, and drinking it as they watched the parade. I'm so used to it being illegal to drink on the street. Boy, not this day. There was a hell of a lot of alcohol being consumed. And not just beer. I saw loads of people walking by with full-on liquor bottles, you know, rum, whiskey... and not little pint bottles either. It was weird, to say the least. I have two drinks and I need to take a nap.

We walked around after the parade, and saw this amazing church, with a massive food stall in front of it.

Already, by 2 pm, the garbage was overflowing. Most of the food stalls didn't have garbage cans, and the few on the street were no match for the sheer number of people.

And I mean sheer number; I read that this festival is the second largest street festival in Europe. I believe it. Right about when I took this picture, I realized it was probably time to go. I'm not a big fan of being in the middle of a crowd. And this was the mother of all crowds.

We made our way out (thanks again to Melissa) and got on the tube. We got off at Covent Garden, and walked around looking at all the shows playing right now. Dirty Dancing looks like it'd be a great one to see.

We ended up in a pub, where I finally got my bangers and mash, and a nice pint of Strongbow cider. Want some?