The balloon fiesta.

We caught the bus into the city centre where we then made our way to the ‘ferry café’ that we really love for a cup of coffee and hot chocolate. Now feeling revived and more ‘awake’ we slowly made our way towards the shops of Bristol, stopping on the way at the ‘Walkabout’ pub quickly jump on the net (still checking prices of up coming travels!) and then onto to the mall to find both the boys some new thongs. It seemed a little redundant as it was raining, but still, we’re optimists, we figure by buying thongs the weather HAS to get better, right? It was a successful mission buying thongs for the boys and finding t-shirts for Luke.

Back to Ann and Bryans where we then got ready for our evening at the balloon fiesta that was staring tonight. We were dropped off at the bus station, which, thanks to the immense traffic took about 45 minutes when it should have only taken 20 minutes! Once on the bus we made our way to the grounds where we were greeted with a large ‘carnival’ atmosphere. There were rides and side show alleys and on the oval one lone hot air balloon. We had been expecting many hot air balloons to be blowing gently in the breeze, so to see one lone one, promoting a local big name store, was a little disappointing. We quickly made our way to the alcohol tent for beers and Pimms before making a round trip of the oval.

Martin then met up with us and from there our little group grew as some of Martins friends joined us, including Rich who we all met when he and Martin made there way out to Australia, it was really nice to see him again.

We stood around talking for a while before a set of fire works signaled the start of the ‘balloon fiesta’

The Balloon Fiesta is a big carnival where people come from all over the world with their hot air balloons and there are all sorts of different activities, take offs, shows etc and, on the first night, like tonight, there is a show where the balloons all light up in time to music that is playing, such as ABBA, Tom Jones, classical tunes etc. It really does look spectacular against the night sky! This lasted for about half an hour and the end of this was once more signified by a large firework display that seemed to take place RIGHT behind us, which made us jump a mile, let me tell you!

We made a hasty retreat at the end of this in a bid to outrun the 5000 strong crowd; we did well, though we still managed to get caught up a little. Martin had parked a good 20 minute walk away, so we made the trek to the car which was probably good for us after all the hideous greasy food we’d consumed that evening! Ann had waited up for us and to hear all the news from the balloon festival, so we had a chat with her for a bit before hitting the sack for a few hours sleep in preparation of tomorrows activities.

written by  Chris and Emily on August 6, 2009 from Bristol, United Kingdom
from the travel blog: Europe 2009
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