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The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual event which takes place in Notting Hill, West London, England – commencing on a Saturday and ending on the night of the August Bank Holiday Monday. In 2007, it takes place from 25th to 27th August.
The Notting Hill Carnival has attracted up to 1.5 million people in some years, placing it amongst the largest street festivals in the world and probably the largest in Europe.
The format for the Carnival takes the following pattern:
Saturday – the “Panorama” takes place, a competition between steel bands mainly from the London area, but increasingly from around the UK.
Sunday – Children’s Day, with a shortened Carnival route, but with similar themes and activities as the main event adapted for children and young people.
Monday – the Main Carnival which covers a route of about 3 miles along the Great Western Road, Chepstow Road, Westbourne Grove and Ladbroke Grove.
The parade consists of lorries, trucks and floats with steel bands (often called steel pan bands or pan bands in the US) or mobile sound systems, some with huge loudspeakers. They are accompanied by costumed masqueraders and dancers, some in very exotic attire.
Along the route there are approximately 40 static sound systems and stages playing a wide range of music at high volume. The traditional Calypso, Soca, Ska and Reggae can be found alongside more modern rhythms and other music styles.
Although there have been occasional problems over the years, more recently any trouble has been localised and little more than one could expect when up to 500,000 congregate in a small area for a whole day celebrating and (naturally at party time) drinking alcohol.
The Notting Hill Carnival is seen not only as a dynamic celebration of multi-culturalism in London, but also a socially inclusive gathering, albeit dominated by Afro–Caribbean influences.
Many of the floats and dancers take their inspiration from the Brazilian Carnivals, especially Rio de Janeiro.
In 2006 the Carnival organisers estimated that 500,000 people attended on both the Sunday and Monday. Of course, with so many people attending for much of the day and staying on into the evening, there are substantial catering requirements. For many it is their first introduction to foods from a variety of cultures, especially Caribbean cooking.
The popularity of the Notting Hill Carnival has led to criticism and controversy, with the authorities wanting to move it from the narrow streets of what is essentially a small residential area to Hyde Park, where safety would be improved, policing made easier and simpler management and control systems could be implemented.
If you’re planning on taking a trip to Mexico, there are literally thousands of things you can do there. One of the most interesting and fulfilling, however, is to go check out some of the numerous cultural sites that are open to the public.
One interesting and lesser known cultural site to check out is the caves in Baja that contain ancient cave paintings from indigenous peoples in the area. They’re a couple of hours drive from the U.S., so you can go there even if you aren’t planning a full-fledged trip. It’s a nice weekend trip for people from
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Like many other aboriginal cultures around the world, the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic have made use of drums in some of their traditional music for centuries. Inuit drum dancing played a part in many special occasions such as births, marriages, an Inuit boy's first hunt, changing of seasons, greetings for visitors or to honor someone who had passed away. News of these special events was spread by word of mouth and many Inuit traveled great distances to attend.
The Inuit drum called a qilaut was traditionally made from
caribou skin with seal or walrus skin around the handle. Before,
Inuit drum dancing was most commonly done by men
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Although Carnival has almost universal appeal wherever the Roman Catholic Church has a substantial presence, the level and extent of celebration varies enormously, ranging from hugely popular, highly developed, commercially supported, tourist-inspired events down to small celebrations within a locality which may only involve a few small villages or a small town.
Some of these events are Carnival in its traditional sense, but many have elements of local folklore integrated. The event in Sydney is a Gay & Lesbian Carnival. Some are promoted as Mardi Gras, although not necessarily limiting themselves to the day before Ash Wednesday. Most start two weeks
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Torrevieja is one of the most important summer holiday spots in the province of Alicante, about 50 kilometres from the city of Alicante and making up what is known as the Costa Blanca in Spain. Torrevieja and the town of Pilar de la Horadada are in the southern tip, the last towns before you head into the province of Murcia.
When making holiday plans, if you are to arrive there by plane, the closest airport would be the one in Alicante called the Altet. It has great flight combinations with the rest of Europe, especially when flying in from England.
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The Lancashire coastal town of Blackpool became a tourist attraction with the development of the railways, firstly as a place for cotton workers and their families from the mill towns of East Lancashire to spend a day on the golden sands, and later as a place for them to spend a whole week beside the sea.
Nowadays, people flock in their ten of thousands for almost 10 weeks each Autumn to see the dazzling illuminated display of lights and tableaux along the seafront promenade. Blackpool Illuminations are now one of the biggest tourist attractions in the United Kingdom, with coachloads of
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