Balloon Fiesta 2011
So a few weeks ago Dave talked me into going on a balloon ride this balloon fiesta. Well it didn't actually take much talking - I've been wanting to do this forever and even tried to organise something last year but it was all too hard and never ended up going.
As we were heading for Black Mountain the clouds closed in
Yesterday morning we were meant to be at Questacon at 5:45am, so I dutifully set my alarm. Except I set it for 5:51am instead of 4:51am! Thank heavens Dave called me at 5:19 otherwise I'd have missed out completely. So instead of a leisurely getting ready time, I was ready in three minutes flat, and had to do my hair in the car, and no shower. Blah.
We went with Balloon Aloft, and it was all very organised. They took us out to Kingston so that we could see the rest of the balloons from a distance rather than being right in the middle of them.
There's sixteen to a balloon - four to each of four compartments. When it was time to get in, we hopped in, but a group of four tried to get in with us. They'd gotten three in before the operators said you can't do that, and of course we had to get out and move. Which was fair enough, but it turned out a bit bad in terms of positioning on the ride. We ended up at the "back" of the basket rather than the front, which meant we were facing the wrong direction for the rest of the balloons, the wrong direction for Civic, the wrong direction for Black Mountain and the wrong direction for Belconnen :(:(:( And if it had been sunny we would have had the sun in our faces the entire trip - luckily it was cloudy then! Was really really frustrated that I couldn't get photos of some of the things I wanted to :( The final insult was them wanting to charge $15 for a photo of us on the balloon. For the price we paid ($360 each) I think they could have thrown this in! So wasn't too happy about that. But anyways.
Otherwise the ride was pretty awesome. Took 672 photos!
So we landed and came back for breakfast cooked by Neil and then went home and attempted to get more sleep (I failed!)
Inflation
We were on the Questacon balloon! Which was way cool, cause I have a picture of that balloon on my desktop that I took from our back window one morning..
We spun around at the beginning so had a view of the other balloons
Apparently it was the maiden voyage of this balloon
Rowers
Kingston
The carillon
Parliament House
Flagpole
Old Parliament House
Two balloons, two Parliament Houses
A magpie came to visit
High court
Parliament Houses
Questacon
National Museum
Over a carpark
National Museum
Lake Burley Griffin
Civic
Woden
The burners
As we were heading for Black Mountain the clouds closed in
Gap in photos as we passed by Black Mountain Tower (on the wrong side of course)
Belconnen and Lake Ginninderra
Balloon flying low over Aranda
Deflation. The pilot said he'd been in a balloon once where someone opened that vent at the top at 3000 feet - he said "it wasn't a good feeling"
Rolling up the balloon
All packed away!
This is where I took all the photos on the day - marked out by my photoMate GPS
Amazing photos my amigo, now I really wanna go ballooning :D
March 20, 2011 9:20 PMVery cool pictures! But very uncool about you having to move when you got there first! I've never been on balloon ride--that I remember--might have to give it a try someday. Thanks for sharing!
March 23, 2011 3:27 AM