London: Aug 30: Notting Hill Carnival

On Sunday, we attended the Notting Hill Carnival, a Jamaican-themed event and one of the world's largest street festivals/parties. The entire district was closed to cars! We wandered through the district and found the festival just goes on and on. Given the crowds, the visible police presence wasn't a surprise. It boggles the mind that there were so many people everyplace we visited, yet the festival was spread over the whole district. And it was loud: there was music all over the place, all played through speakers, usually mounted on trucks, plus many people with whistles (the purpose of which, other than adding more noise, I know not). Also, I was happy to notice that practically every vendor sold food. :) (This was perhaps a good thing, as that meant there were enough vendors to service the crowds.) The food choices mainly consisted of grilled jerk chicken, curried goat, rice & peas, and Asian food (satays, fried noodles, and egg rolls). (Obviously, only those first three are Jamaican.) Finally, I'll note the Carnival has a parade but, unlike the SF parade, the route wasn't fenced, making it easy to cross.

I took a good number of pictures at the festival. Di Yin also took some pictures. The link goes to her first picture of the Notting Hill Carnival; when you see a picture of me holding a plate with a fried plantain, you've reached the end of the relevant portion. Her later pictures are for the following day; I'll link to them in my next post.

Oh, and as you'll see from the food comments in the pictures, it was an unexpectedly great food day.

After about four hours, the ringing in our ears and the density of the crowd drove us away.

We went home, had tea, sat around for a while, then headed to Putney Bridge, a downtown area near our apartment, for Sunday roast. Sunday roast is a traditional British meal served at pubs. It consists of some form of meat roasted with potatoes and vegetables. Given its uniquely British status, I knew I wanted to have it once while in England, and Di Yin and I managed to fit in on this day.

We tried it, deemed it good, and returned home for dessert.