Notting Hill Carnival

Hi All

Yesterday Stephen and I headed down to Notting Hill for the annual Notting Hill Carnival which has been held every August Bank Holiday Weekend since 1966, and is the largest celebration of its kind in Europe.

It originally started as a local festival set up by the West Indian immigrants of the area and has now become a full-blooded Caribbean carnival, attracting millions of visitors from around the world. With scores of massive sound systems, many spectacular floats and, of course, the traditional steel drum bands, plus hundreds of stalls lining the streets. Music is at the heart of Notting Hill Carnival - Historically steel bands, Soca & Calypso Music have been at the heart of Carnival but in recent years these the website reports that these have been overtaken by the static sound systems playing anything from Reggae to R&B, Funk, House, and Dub.

Stephen and I arrived and were met with some awesome sounds as soon as we got off the tube - the music was coming from the nearby church and there were people everywhere of every nationality headed down towards Portobello Road. There was the smells of awesome Caribbean food in the air, Curried Goat, Rice & Peas, Jerk Chicken and Red Beans and Rice everywhere and the soungs of whistles coming from every second person (Its tradition to blow whistles when the parade goes past).

We made our way down to the parade (Mas) area just in time to see them start to come past - and loved the spectacular costumes, headpieces, dancing and music that came from each of the floats.

As you can see - so much effort goes into the costumes for Mas and people really get into it, both in the parade and those watching from the sidelines. We stayed for a few hours and soaked it all in but did not feel game to go into any of the venues that had live music, as they were so jam packed that we would have had to fight and push our way in - people were spilling out of every doorway....

Loved the Carnival and will definitely go again next yeat if we are still around London (we have new hopes of winning the Euro-Millions Lotto and buying a house on Portobello Road with a Balcony so we have prime position next year but we will have to see how that pans out.... )

Lots of love to all at home and scattered across the planet....

Jen & Stephen x