Notting Hill Carnival 2007

Hello all! Well, this entry is a belated account of our day trip last Monday to the Notting Hill Carnival, a 2-day, Caribbean-themed festival held annually in London...

Monday was a bank holiday (which seems to be a public holiday for which nobody knows the occasion), and after being picked up by Trev and Sharon in the morning, we all boarded the train to London. Once in London, we changed from the train to the underground, and soon arrived at Notting Hill. Walking towards the festival along with lots of other people, we saw police on foot and on horseback, a bus set up as a Crime Reporting Centre, Portaloos, and a truck cab full of toilet paper!

It wasn't until we arrived at the main area and the celebrations really got underway that we could truly appreciate the sheer volume and, er, “vibrance” of the Carnival-goers! It was absolutely incredible - a visual overload!!

Throughout the day, small street parades came by every now and then. These consisted of a large number of people shimmying their way down the street wearing elaborate, brightly-coloured costumes. Many of the costumes stuck up 2 or 3 metres above the person's head, and were often wider than the trucks in the parade! (Other costumes made up for this by being barely there!) One person had a giant chandelier jiggling 2m overhead, others wore large baskets of cotton balls as headdresses, and one woman was dressed in a wedding gown the size of a small lounge room. Sometimes their protruding headwear got caught in others' headdresses when they turned to look at something! Many of these costumed, dancing parade marchers got left behind and could be seen rushing down the street behind their parade for some minutes afterwards. There were also trucks carrying DJs, steel drum bands and more dancing people, and even some buses and tractors. But I think a few pictures might bring this scene to life more than my words can!...

A hint of how crowded it was...

A policeman gets out of the way of someone who has been left behind!...

Here are some videos - watch the crowd ducking when the green costume comes past, and check out the size of the crowd in the second video!...

This year they anticipated that 900,000 people would attend – which, from what we saw, seems about spot on! In addition, there were 11,000 police officers on duty there – a number that was really put into perspective for me when I realised it equaled the entire population of Dalby!!! At one point we were standing on a street corner and I counted 29 police officers within 30 seconds – so we certainly felt safe!

Of course, almost as interesting as the parades were some of the people who came to watch them! Lots of awesome hair styles and braids, plus wigs, tattoos, piercings, etc! Every time a parade was coming, people would rush to the edge of the street and try to find a position where they could actually see. With people pressed close all around and bouncing to the loud music, I imagine I went some way towards understanding what a mosh pit must feel like! Not to mention the fact that whistles labelled with different countries were being sold as souvenirs, and the DJs coming by would shout "blow your whistle!" to the hyper crowd, who would obligingly reply in the dulcet tones of a million "phweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet"s!

Me with a policeman who was getting into the fun of the festival...

A talented bird, apparently...

There were also lots of food stalls selling jerk chicken and other Caribbean food. Ben and I had some roti (bread) with curry goat and salad, and later on I tried some roast corn on the cob – delicious! In the afternoon we had ice cream cones and shared a cup of fruit salad – watermelon, pineapple and grapes.

Despite the ridiculous amount of people, which I think was the most people I have seen in one place in my life, it was actually quite a laidback day and we even fell asleep on the sidewalk while relaxing in between street parades!

At 5pm, we headed off to Chinatown for tea. The underground station near Notting Hill was so crowded that they just had all the gates open so you wouldn't need to swipe your ticket and hold people up! At Chinatown, we let Sharon (a foodie and the one whose idea Chinatown was) choose a restaurant and order the food. It was delicious!

On the train back to Crawley, everyone except me fell asleep, and we arrived home at about 9pm – exhausted and (in my case) aching. What a day – it was GREAT!!! I hope you enjoyed the photos. :) Cheerio, Anna.