Fly along in my beautiful balloon

So a couple of weeks ago my brother and his family went on holiday to the Belgian Ardennes and took my mother with them for a long weekend, during which they went to a ballooning festival. That got my mum to talk about how she wanted to do that someday, which my sister in law (more or less; it’s complicated) remembered. So when she found somebody offering a ticket for such a balloon flight cheap online, she didn’t hesitate but talk that guy into giving the ticket to her for just a bouquet of flowers and some pictures from the flight. She’s awesome like that; her skill at social enginering would be scary if used for evil.

To cut a long story short, mum wanted somebody to go along with her, nobody else in the family wanted to or dared to, so I got to go along. Having to buy my own ticket even. But it was worth it and it was brilliant flying over the Dutch countryside on a perfect evening, live tweeting the whole thing.

2 Comments

  • Cat

    September 16, 2014 at 6:36 pm

    That looks beautiful! Photo 14 is one of those “wildlife bridges” I’ve read about, right? To allow wild animals to cross the highways without being killed?

    I hadn’t realized that the Netherlands includes forested land. I had always pictured it as being cities and farmland.

  • Martin Wisse

    September 17, 2014 at 8:38 am

    Correct, that’s indeed a wildlife bridge, of which there were several across our route.

    The region we flew about does have the advantage of being slightly more “wild” than much of the Netherlands, which is either build up areas (the west) or farm country (most of the rest). The forests for the most part are planted than truly wild though.

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