London

The Heathrow Express gets us into Central London before the Tube station has even opened and when we reach our hotel at 7:30am, we are far too early to check-in.  Ross and I leave our bags and venture out onto the street.  It is a clear sunny Sunday morning and Oxford Street is only just starting to stir.  We wander the quiet streets for a while but the fatigue is starting to set in so we haunt the pavement outside Patisserie Valerie until it opens for breakfast.  It is a slow wait at the hotel until 10am when we can finally access our room and have a welcome shower and some sleep.

In the early afternoon we arrange to meet Amanda close to her hotel in Bayswater but on the way there we get swept up in the crowds and chaos of the Notting Hill Carnival.  It's a buzzing throng of excited young people, colour, drums, costumes, police, music, floats, street drinking, and mounds of litter.  We find Amanda and together follow the crowds around a few blocks, stopping to view the floats and trying to hear our own thoughts above the din.

The sights, sounds and smells of the Notting Hill Carnival

In the end jet lag wins out again and we say our goodbyes with Ross and I making our slow way back to our hotel on foot.  Tube stations are closed so it's easier to follow the crowd as it snakes its way past Hyde Park towards Marble Arch.

We retreat inside our comfortably dusky room with its four-poster bed and plush couch.  Despite our best efforts to stay awake, blissful comfortable uninterrupted sleep claims us at 7pm.