Flying high on Priyanka's Birthday...

 

Riding in the clouds on her birthday weekend!

 

November... Priyanka's birthday month!! Faced with a challenge to do something interesting, I booked us on a popular day break Hot Air Balloon experience over Hunter Valley.. local wine country... followed by champagne breakfast at a popular champagne winery Peterson's Champagne house. Turned out to be an experience of a life time.. worth the 4am meet-up over coffee, sitting half-asleep in a jeep chasing after the 'right' wind direction for nearly an hour. We watched the sun rise from the balloon and burn the fog and cloud cover... was fantastic. A bloke in our balloon proposed to his long time girlfriend during the flight... making it an even more interesting one and yet another excuse for us to down some more good bubbly together after the ride... folding and loading the balloon into the truck was itself enough work to deserve the breakfast and fantastic champagne. The only way, we thought, to not ruin the rest of the day was take our beach towels, pack some sandwiches, drive to a nearby beach and go to sleep for a few hours before heading home to complete a good Sunday.

The night before the balloon ride, we went to Hunter Valley Gardens, which are one of the largest gardens in the state and they had been lighted with a few million lights for Christmas.

Please use this link for pictures from the garden and from the balloon ride! Some of the pictures are from the RedBull FlugTag (translates as 'Flight Day') event held this year in Sydney.. this is a festival where various people build flying machines and make them 'fly' of a high platform build just above the water.