Carnival
Saturday, September 23rd, 2006August 30th, 2006
Notting Hill carnival is the biggest street party in Europe and only 2nd to the Rio carnival, and I’d never heard of it! Our pub just happens to be on the carnival route and the whole area is transformed into this crazy carribean party/market. This year about 2million people came….it was very very intense. So our usually quite, no music, very local type pub was turned into a very different place over the 2 days of carnival in the weekend. We decked it out with giante inflatable palm trees and bananas, Jamacan flags, ballons, pirate ships and just about anything else that looked slightly carribean we found in our party catalogue. Out went the glasses, in came plastice cups, no furniture, bbq instead of kitchen going and we all got carnival t-shirts and a whole lot of fun dressups. We got in a lot of staff from other pubs, so it was cool having a big group of us in such a cool atmosphere. It was super busy both days but fun to work, we had open bar for all the staff (only time ever Ive been allowed to drink while working) and we spent most of the time dancing behind the bar. Because there were so many of us we got to go out and check out the floats as then went past. My bedroom window looks directly onto the road so we had a pretty good view! Also the whole area was full of stalls selling fresh coconuts, mangos, corn on the cob, jamacan beer. Big sounds systems were set up all over the place and everyone was getting the skank on and thinking they were rastas. Pretty awesome. I spent most of the time inside the pub because it was such a mission to go anywhere. Only worked during the day on the first day so had the evening off to hang out and a few of us went to a few other bars. The whole bar was packed, we hired bouncers and you could hardly move, it was a very different place to what it normally is! So basically is was a huge few days with little sleep, it was a big struggle to get up in the morning afterwards and clean the place up, which took ages. But its all back to normal now, decorations are gone, music is off….kind of sad but had a great few days and have mostly recovered now.
Looking foward to this weekend as have got 2 sets of people who are in London to see , so itll be nice to catch up with them. So all good here in London!
check out photos on my photo site and here are some videos, first some crazy buskers and a little of what was going on outside my window
admin