Ballooning

I arrived in Germany on Saturday evening and as we sat down around my brother’s kitchen table to eat dinner, a hot air balloon floated past the window. It’s the lowest I’ve seen one. We could even see inside the basket. It was a beautiful warm evening and it seemed so idyllic to be floating about over the vineyards.

It’s one of the things I’ve wanted to do for a very long time. When I lived in Sydney many years ago, people would go up in one when they visited Uluru. I never got to Uluru. When I travelled in Australia I went to Tasmania instead. It was great, but there were no hot air balloons. So I’m still waiting to go up in one.

I’ve checked them out in the UK and they all seem to be run by Virgin and the best price is about £150. As this is something I’d like to do with someone rather than on my own, it could be a while before I find someone willing to spend that much money unless it’s something they’ve also wanted to do for a long time.

I recently signed up to ‘Groupon’ which I heard of through a friend and also on another blog. Most of the offers that have come through so far haven’t been of much interest to me, but then a couple of days ago I got one offering balloon flights for £79. As I’m in Germany at the moment and the offer was already out of date by the time I checked my emails I couldn’t do anything about it this time. But it’s good to know that there are offers like this out there and so next time hopefully I’ll be able to go for it.