Notting Hill Has a CarniVAL for Bank Holiday, Not a CarniVUL

We learned this the hard way. And the amusing way.

When I was looking up how to get to our hotel, I noticed on the Transportation for London website that they were announcing Tube interruptions because of the Notting Hill Carnival. "Wow, a carnival!" I thought. "That would be fun!"

"Hey, let's check out this carnival!" I said to M the Friday before. "Sunday is supposed to be Kids' Day. The parade starts at 9AM."

"Sounds good!" he said. We were pretty jazzed, because well, it apparently it doesn't take much for us.

Mr. A was pretty excited, too. "A carnival! Yay! Let's go to the carnival!"

And then we got there. . .and we kept walking. . .and walking. . .and more and more people were coming, but. . .to where? Then, M said, "Well, there's the gay pride float." Because, well, there was this fellow standing on top of a. . .truck?. . .open cattle cart? And he was wearing something like Speedo shorts. He was waving a flag from some African nation (sorry, I'm not totally up to date on the flags of the 54 African countries), and was dancing to some serious Afro-Caribbean beats. Hilarious. And not the gay pride float, which made it even more hilarious.

We had been looking forward to the smells of food from around the world. What we got were the smells of BO, dirt, Cannabis and decomposing garbage. Yum!

Mr. A was NOT happy. That's such an understatement, it's ridiculous. M and I had finally started to loosen up a little and realize our mistake (with humor), so I told Mr. A it was up to him to be miserable for the rest of the day, but at the end of it, we were all going to have fun, and if he decided not to, then it would be a double disappointment for him.

My favorite part of the day was the booty dancers. Extreme hilarity. They followed the parade "floats" (remember, these were just open trucks with sound systems blasting music and half-naked men waving flags on top). To have so much confidence would be amazing. The random street performers were a close second, though.

It was sort of hard not to be in a good mood, because the mojo was infectious. Even the police weren't jerks. Look at this guy. He's having a great time. He might have shaken his head as soon as these crazy girls walked away, but at least he wasn't a stuffed shirt for the picture.

The highlight of the parade was supposed to be some Drag Queen-looking things, but instead we got this. I was super excited for the Drag Queens, and instead I got a low-rent version of Tinkerbelle.

I'm still trying to figure out what exactly qualifies this as Kids' Day other than kids being there with their parents. Unless drinking, smoking pot and trashing streets are typical parent-child bonding activities here. Maybe.

We walked for about 3 hours in total. Notting Hill is supposed to be a nice area, but all the businesses were boarded up for the event, and the streets were just trashed. Finally, M said to me, "Um, these businesses are just boarded up because of the carnival, right? I mean, we're not in a really scary area, right?"

Sure. . .works for me.

Finally, we got too far away from our hotel for M's comfort, especially because I couldn't see where we were on my little book of London maps. So we turned around and retraced our steps, stopping to let the kids dance a little on the way.

Of course, by this time, Mr. A didn't want to leave. So then he pouted all the way back to the park about having to leave behind all his fun. Funny how kids work sometimes.

And of course, Mini-Minion was sad to leave because she generally has fun wherever we go. Like Mr. A, though, sometimes it takes a little coaxing.

On the way back, we saw the most amazing thing ever. The day before on our way to pick up food, Mr. A, Mini-Minion and I saw this older woman juggling just randomly in the street. She was in like a way-too-big business skirt suit with these crazy flats, and she was just a-jugglin' away. It was just awesome. So guess who we happened to see entertaining the crowds at the Notting Hill Carnival? Yep, Juggles. Amazing. I wish we would have taken video, because moving picture = 1,000,000 times more fantastic.

We finally made it back to Hyde Park, so we stopped by the Princess Diana Memorial Park before we headed back to the hotel. So worth the wait and the hype. The kids went positively nuts. It's like a real-life version of Neverland.

There are separate lands inside. . .a fort, a pirate ship, a Native American village. . .it is truly amazing.

And it has really tame squirrels, which I thought was cool at first, and then I thought, "Whoa. What if one of these guys has rabies? That would really suck."

Because these are really the things that run through my head. And that guy's a little sketch. He's giving too much side-eye for my liking. Like he's plotting the attack. Not cool, little guy.