Notting Hill Carnival

Hi All,

Sorry I haven't blogged in a couple of days!

In my last blog, I mentioned that we were heading out to the Notting Hill Carnival. Stupid me, I pictured Tilt-A-Whirl, Cotton Candy, and maybe even a zeppole. This was more like CARNIVALE that they have in Brazil, etc. Here's the story behind it. I guess in the 60s a lot of the people who lived in Notting Hill were of Carribean descent, so they wanted to celebrate their heritage with a parade and festival. Today, it's turned into this huge thing where over 3 million people travel in to be a part of it. Sounds right up my alley, right? WRONG. It started off with us not being able to get off at the Notting Hill Gate Underground Station. The red flags should have gone off then! So we got off that the next station and walked to where we thought the carnival was (truthfully, we just followed the crowd). We followed the crowd into this crazy mob scene of people who were all drinking in the street to the point of oblivion (I guess we wouldn't have minded that if we were too), and dancing to rap music, and eating jerk chicken. Quickly, I started to get a case of claustrophobia, and we decided that we needed to get out of there. As we were trying to get back the way we came, we realized we couldn't but had to snake around Notting Hill to get out. So, there were no scrambler, no caramel apples, no carnival games to win Homer Simpson stuffed animals. Just drunk people on the street, people trying to sell you weed, and jerk chicken.

When we finally go out of there, and to a tube station, we found that it was only letting people off, and you couldn't get ON the tube there, so we had to continue walking to one that would let us on. We were probably at the carnival for about 45 minutes to an hour, and most of that time was spent just trying to get the hell out of there!

The news on Tuesday showed that a teenager got shot while at the carnival! I knew that place was bad news! Shootings here are VERY few and far between because they have ridiculously strict gun laws. Even the cops or "bobbies" don't carry guns! So you can imagine the uproar this had!

Today I am going to Kensington Palace. This is where Princess Di used to live when she was in London. I think they are having a memorial service both today and tomorrow. Apparently, they have all kinds of exhibits there with her dresses, etc. It's a pretty big deal here--10th Anniversary of her death. The big scandal was that Camilla was going to attend the private service that the Prince's arranged, but I suppose her PR people thought better of it, and she is no longer attending. How tacky to even think of going! You only ruined the poor girl's marriage--and she outwardly spoke about how she didn't like you! Jeez Camilla!