hot air ballooning

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is Part I of how I spent my 28th birthday. We are currently in Cappadocia, Turkey. I didn't realize that it was my birthday until midnight, after we booked the hot air balloon and Cappadocia red tour. I also realized that I would only get 4 hours of sleep that night because we had to get up at 430 am to meet the balloon in the valley. I fell asleep happy with anticipation for the upcoming day.


At 445, we groggily got out of our comfy bed caves, got dressed really fast, and ran out the door. The shuttle was there to take us to the office where we waited with about 20 other people. We didn't see a single soul walking around town the day before, but suddenly, at 5 am in the morning, all these tourists came out of nowhere to ride the hot air balloon! The pilots informed me that a lot of these tourists are richer folk who stay outside of downtown, higher up in the resort caves.

 This is OUR balloon!! Some girls we at our hotel went on the hot air balloon as well but with a different company. The crazy part is that there were about 30 balloons in the air that morning, and many of them were converged together..but it so happens that she got some amazing shots of OUR balloon in the air from HER balloon!!!! Even better...we took pictures of HER balloon in the air without knowing!!! We met up after dinner on the rooftop terrace of our hotel in Ephesus a few days later, and started talking about our experiences in Cappadocia. Suddenly, we realized that we had been taking pictures of each other all morning!! Both of the companies that we went through were set up farther apart than the others, so we had more space to take off. I can't believe our luck. She had a Canon DSLR so the images were just top quality. Here are the top 3 from her camera!!!

 



in the air!

murat, our pilot

We were going really low here and really fast...makes for a great pic!

balloon shadow

landing a bit off...so the crew had to rush to get the balloon straightened out