Notting Hill Carnival

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At the beginning of my extended stay in London I had vowed to travel to a different city in the european countries every weekend. I wanted to see as much as possible taking advantage of the incredibly cheap airfares sometimes you can get when flying from London.

I have been trapped for a few weekends already with my passport at the visa offices for a visa change, so my only choices are to stay in Great Britain. Not that being "trapped" in London is bad at all, but I had plans to visit Croatia while I'm here and with my assignment coming to an end soon I think it will have to wait for a next time. As I was saying, staying in London offers many possibilities and this weekend I headed for the Notting Hill Carnival. I was warned by several people about going on the main day unless I really liked hordes of drunk people so I went on the Family day, which is a smaller scale parade where families can take their kids for a taste of the food, the music and, yes, mini-hordes of drunk people.

With my blood being 100% latin, it would have been impossible not to enjoy the explosion of music and color

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The music, the dancing and the costumes of this day were incredible, a lot of the dance troupes were all kids and a few of them had several ethnicities represented, but for the most part the groups included island immigrants, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Haiti.

With my blood being 100% latin, it would have been impossible not to enjoy the explosion of music and color, but even for me the passion these guys feel about dancing is at a different level. They express themselves through dancing and through smiling, life can be hard, most of the time it is, but when you see them dancing you would think everything is perfect. And the pride they feel on showing how they can move can be felt like a wave coming from their bodies.

It was a beautiful experience, if you go try also the main day event, just don't stay too late after the parade when things get a little bit unruly and enjoy the food, it is greasy so you will need a couple of beers after ...