Pardon the off-center appearance…

It’s 12:30am and the Tube is closed…Night bus time!

London’s Tube closes nightly around 12:30am. Just after midnight you’ll hear all of the Last Tubers saying their goodbyes and referencing their need to catch the last train. But if you aren’t ready to leave yet, and don’t want to spring for London’s pricey black cabs, fret not. Just walk over to Trafalgar Square, and chances are that there’s a night bus going your direction.

As to be expected with one of the most develop public transportation systems in the world, London’s works around the clock, with about 100 lines operating overnight. And I’d argue that you haven’t really experienced a night out in London without sitting upstairs on a double-decker bus with all of the characters heading out of Central in the wee hours of the morning. If a university near you ever offered a “drunk bus” to take you home from a night at campus parties (at my university it was known as “P2P Shuttle”), then this is akin to the grown-up version of that.

Night bus memories tend to be blurry

Of course, you can experience it the other way as well, if you’re an early riser. As most Tube services don’t start until 5:30 or 6, if you have an early call time at work or an early flight out of Heathrow, you may be able to enjoy the last of the previous night’s entertainers on the way to start your day…

Life is Beautiful in Camden Town…

How many people do you know that this could be applied to?

In the U.S., it seems like a must for any reality television show to have someone on the panel that boasts a heavy British accent. Whatever the reason, it catches our ear, women find it charming, and it creates memorability. Not to mention that just about everyone can reel off their rendition of a British accent on demand.

But while it makes enough sense intuitively that it would, I am still surprised every time the same effect occurs on the other side of the Atlantic. Despite that, it appears that British people have the same reaction to American accents as Americans do to theirs. Catchy, charming and memorable. And yes, the English do love to offer their renditions of American accents as much as we do theirs!

So if you’re in America and you want to be considered exotic, fear not…there still is a stage for you—in England.

I’ve seen this sign on a surprising number of shops around London…

Imagine a million people running around with no place to go, all united in celebration of….something. So what that the vast majority of them haven’t a clue exactly what they are celebrating? It’s Notting Hill Carnival, baby!

Every year on the last weekend of August, about a million people of every creed, color and nationality descend upon this otherwise quaint neighborhood on the western edge of central London—just to the north of the posh Kensington and Holland Park areas and just east of gritty Shepherd’s Bush. The Carnival originated in the 1960’s as a celebration of West Indian culture, with a heavy dose of Trinidad, Jamaica, St. Lucia and just about every other country in the region. While its origins trace to a time of heavy racial tension in London, it has evolved over the past four decades into a multicultural celebration, with countless blocks of narrow residential streets packed shoulder to shoulder with peaceful party-goers.

While the event is centered around a parade, featuring Caribbean steel bands, dancers with elaborate costumes, radio deejays and the like, most attendees probably never see the parade course. Instead, every few hundred feet there seems to be another party going on, with a new set of speakers blasting reggae, trance, hip hop, and just about anything else that gets people moving.

If you can navigate to some of the food stalls, you can enjoy Jamaican specialties like jerk chicken, plantains, patties and rice & peas, and of course there is Red Stripe—the beer of choice by a longshot—available by the basketful.

Enjoy some of the pictures below from the Carnival, and if it looks appealing to you, book your ticket to London for the last weekend of August. If you’re looking for one of the largest street parties on the planet, with completely free entrance, you won’t be disappointed. 

Heathrow Airport, Terminal 3…

One of my favorite pieces of airport artwork in the world, featured outside of Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5…

My ID:  7:07am, Thursday, 30 May 2002:  London Heathrow Immigration

United Airlines flight UA956 from New York-Kennedy

Unfortunately, my Initial Descent to the UK wasn’t the greatest. As my first foray overseas, I knew nothing about immigration, customs, or the world’s busiest international airport. As such, I booked a ticket from London’s Gatwick Airport to Dublin, Ireland, for about three hours after my scheduled arrival into Heathrow. I had calculated that the time to get between the two was about an hour, so that would be plenty. What I failed to account for, however, was the full hour it took me simply to clear immigration at Heathrow’s Terminal 3. With most North & South American flights, as well as many European flights and even some Asian flights, arriving in the morning, I learned first-hand that Heathrow can be very congested during these times.

By the time I finally cleared customs and made my way to Gatwick, my flight was long gone. I had to purchase another ticket…only to be informed that it was a bank holiday weekend and everything was full (this was also my first introduction to the terminology of “Bank Holiday”). Fortunately, I was able to purchase the last seat on the last flight available that day to Ireland, but into Belfast instead of my intended destination of Dublin. I took it, and ended up meeting the couple on the flight that I ended up staying with when I returned to London a month later—funny how things always seem to work themselves out.

Not the easiest process in the world to go through…