Car-ne-vail

It's Notting Hill Carnival weekend. Mike and I felt brave enough to head just north of us to Notting Hill. this area has quite a lot of Caribbean folk and thus hosts the carnival. With the recent riots a few weeks back, the fate of the annual festival was uncertain. But in the end they decided to have it. Great! We get to go. We wandered up early, around 10, since the papers said they expected close to 1 million people over the 2 days. Not a lot of people at this time but we did see some groups on parade

. They circle the neighborhood with large lorries carrying either music groups or amps and DJs.

Then following the truck, are dancers or colorful  squads of people.  While wandering through the neighborhood ( which was really different from the day before when we went up to Portobello Road) we came across dozens of street vendors hawking whistles, flags food and more.I really wanted to take more photos, but my camera battery died.
Had to have a taste of the islands, so I talked Mike into curried goat with rice and beans. And to round it off, fired plantain. Yum yum. Just like the day before, we rolled out around noon, just as the masses of people were getting there. But since its supposed to rain again today, we beat the droplets home.