A hot air balloon ride over Cappadocia has been in our sites for some time. We first heard of Cappadocia when we lived in Ecuador, our landlord mentioned that she was headed to Cappadocia when we were leaving the country. After seeing the pictures we thought it looked amazing. The hot air balloon ride became part of the plan after we decided that it was too expensive an option when we were in Bagan. So when we decided that we were headed to Turkey to see Andy and Erin we decided that we would swing through Cappadocia.
The balloon ride the second morning started like many a trip with me, at the butt crack of dawn. We got picked up in the dark and headed to the balloon offices to have a short breakfast. After a cup of coffee we piled into the van to head to the balloons, unfortunately we were called back because the wind was too strong. We then had to wait about 45min. watching a wind channel on TV, hoping the flag would turn from yellow to green, instead of red. When the flag finally turned green we had missed sunrise but everyone piled into the vans as fast as possible just in case it turned red before we got off the ground. Clearly safety didn’t factor too high in anyones minds.
Once at the site they started firing up the balloon and we piled in and were off. The first feeling was one of floating as one would imagine. As we floated up above the cool rock formations I kept pinching myself, it was one of those moments that you can’t believe you are really living. This trip made me realize how many of these moments we have been fortunate enough to experience. Sometimes we lose perspective with the small annoyances of life and miss the dream we are living. I’m trying to remember this trip and how lucky we are as I grade papers, so I grumble a little less and enjoy things a little more.
P.S. I learned that the blog includes my photo settings and lets you also choose the larger image option.
From Russia with Love 