Julia Roberts and her gorgeous smile, Hugh Grant whose growing more charming by the years, worlds largest antique market that deserved her own song 50 years ago, and the colourful parades of the only kind of carnival I actually like; Notting Hill carnival. Speaking of colours, the houses themselves are a colourful piece of Victorian art as well. Whether you think of the movie, the hotspots or a hill, somehow we’ve all heard of Notting Hill. London is vibrant as it is, mainly because it is like this little planet existing of different countries. One of these countries is Notting hill, with beautiful cobblestone paths, leading you trough the perfectly straight streets with candy-alike houses by their side. If not for these colours, the streets will be filled with the smell of fresh foods touching your every nerve, or the shine of antique and silver blinding your sight. On the day we arrived, the shiny antique market was just ending but we still had time to discover some of worlds cutest stores. Notting hill is known for these typical, tiny old stores with brick walls and tiny windows, hiding them from the world as we know it. it is kind of like falling through the rabbithole whenever you enter one of these dimmed stores and find anything a discoverer of cultures and authenticity, fancies. Dusty bookshelves with these magic leather books, retro hairdressers, bakeries with a blinding sense of pink and, all English tea stores with flavours and cups you didn’t know you needed in your life until you see them.
Having entered one of the pinks heavens for a delicious cupcake, the sugarpeek had us strolling trough the alleys like kids on a schooltrip. My favourite street obviously was the one with the massive, Victorian houses with a candyland make-over due to the blinding paint on their walls. Below their little stairways the gardens were extremely organized, and the streets we walked were clean. This was a high-class neighbourhood, yet it didn’t feel too upperclass because of all the cosy little stores and the multicultural parade of people in the streets. It almost felt like a themepark, but then to realize these buildings were a whole lot older than me, made me realize that even in times were people did not have the luxury of big building machines, they could make beautiful things. The further we left this street, the more the atmosphere changed. The houses shrunk and lost their bright colours to typical English bricks, with a lot of typical English chimneys on their typical black roofs. Oh and, very typical English porches in front of their very well organized gardens. I still couldn’t get used to the whole ‘driving on the wrong side of the road thing’ (sorry for calling it wrong, but I just cannot imagine people using their left hand for switching) and I almost got hit by a car while crossing for the first cat that didn’t seem to run from me. It was worth petting him, knowing I wasn’t going to see my dog for 5 months I petted every pet I could possibly pet.
As some kind of alice in wonderland version again, although it was a cat instead of a rabbit, the cat led us into an impressive alley that was a combination of wonderland and England. A small, car-free, cobblestone street with now a combined version of all we saw before; tiny brick houses that copied the colour festival of the streets before. Babyblue, cottoncandy pink, shiny yellow and emerald green. The cats seemed to like this neighbourhood, as they were everyone, watching our every move. The houses were tiny but people got creative, they had lifted their bikes up the tiny balconies were they had to be put in weird positions in order to fit. The gardens were beautiful, filled with roses and overloaded by plants that even took over the houses themselves. I would love to take a look inside these little fairy-tale houses, god I’d pay for it. but then again, what I loved about notting hill is the lack of commerciality. There were no souvenir stores or McDonalds, whatever was there, was there for all. The vibe of Notting hill was extremely English with a touch of fancy, but it was very clean, welcoming, sweet and pure. After having had a cup of coffee in a tiny garden hidden behind a café, hidden from the world in between flowery brick walls, we found our way to Hide park, the green border between Notting Hill & Kensington, about the fanciest neighbourhoods of London.
Being a Royal Park in London, the city were everything that’s royal is also just so classy, Hyde park is a very clean and beautifully trimmed oasis of green. Even the first wild flowers decided to open up for the watery rays of sunshine March offered. The best part of this massive park with its fountains and benches to hang around, was the fauna. The greenest, loudest parrots crisscrossed their ways over your head, causing some funny scenes with those with Ornithophobia. As we were in London I am being fancy, but it’s just the word I found on Google for ‘fear for birds’. What was even better, was the massive army of squirls dominating the park and the people. We opened our sandwiches on a little wooden bench by a blossom tree to be and before I knew, something happened that I didn’t know happened outside movies; a begging squirl came our way. On his back paws he came our way, his little hands waving around excitedly and his big bat eyes focussed on our sandwiches. My mouth stood wide open and my friend was laughing about me even more than this strange scenery. Being a massive animal lover, sat down on the gravel and held up my hand with basically my entire sandwich in it, willing to sacrifise it all. The squirl hopped back on its 4 tiny feet and in strange, suspicious curves, came my way. One last look at me, demanding my trust, and his tiny hands grabbed the larger part of the sandwich and inconveniently ran off with it to a hidden place. ‘that, was the best experience I’ve had in this city’ I smiled. Before we ended todays tour, we had to take a look on the other side of the park, were Kensington was hiding. Not the most famous neighbourhood of London, but definitely in my top 3 favourites. Top 5, maybe, I don’t think I can make a tinier top without neglecting some favourites. Kensington is yet another highly sophisticated area of London. Perfectly red brick buildings with beautifully designed rooftops full of towers and balconies, hide the tiniest, most humble stores and cafes below.
You find anything here, from corner-coffee shops till English breakfasts in dark, wooden bars, from antique stores you can hardly enter because they’re so stuffed with shiny, breakable artifacts, and surprisingly many hairdressers. People were in a rush, as always, there’s a reason they call the London life the Rush life. A coffee to go in one hand, their phone in their other hand, by their ear. The streets were busy and loud, yet some quiet green parks rose up in between the crowdedness. My favourite park was tiny and even hid a little grey church between its trees. Its this I loved most about London, the overwhelming amount of surprises. Churches in tiny parks, parrots in the city, gorgeous buildings that have seen centuries and all have a story to tell, crazy streets filled with beautiful old cabs and busses with several floors. The overwhelming amount of flavours and smells, and my favourite; the harry potter- alike alleys. Kensington, also hid many of those. We followed a small tunnel, went down some stone stairs, and suddenly found ourselves in a different neighbourhood. A quiet one, were all brick buildings had made place for tiny Notting-hill alike buildings that combined into this rainbow-row with perfect rose gardens in front and wooden doors. Nobody was here, making it feel, again, like you’re walking around in some sort of theme park, during an apocalypse. Take one of the perfectly straight corners, passing old, vaguely orange glowing lanterns, and see how the buildings suddenly lose their colours and turn into greybrownish, brick buildings with beautiful stone alleys in between, lit up by lanterns. I just wanted to cross them and find myself at Hogwarts, and I kinda did. Behind every tunnel more alleys appeared, grey brick alleys whose walls sometimes turned out to be cave-alike houses. I hardly saw any person at all behind the tiny windows or in the perfectly organized streets. But I saw myself in the reflection of the everlasting rain-puddles on the street, and I was smiling for having discovered yet another beautiful secret of London.
- It's an amazing life
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