Last Saturday morning found me and 15 other Au Pairs outside a supermarket in Ferney-Voultaire (France) piling into four cars with a baguette each in hand. One of the 15 Au pairs had got us all together to go to a the 35th annual hot air balloon festival up high in the snowy mountain town of Chateau-d'Oex.
The festival has people from all over the world coming to take part in the flights, or just be there to watch the beautiful sight of 50 balloons flying high in the sky amongst the mountain tops. Unfortunately for myself, I did not get to see such a glorious sight, because of all the glorious snow!
It's Switzerland, in winter. Snow is to be expected, especially in the mountains. That wouldn't stop the hot air balloons taking off, but falling snow would. As I drove further up the mountains winding roads, the heavier it snowed though and then I drove slower and slower.
When my car load arrived (cheers all round please) in Chateau-d'Oex the only hot air balloon we saw was the metal statue of one in the middle a roundabout. Clearly the weather had stopped everyone from being able to marvel at the bright colours of silk floating in the air.
A couple of the other car loads bailed out half way hearing that there was a LOT of snow, and we didn't even see the other car load because it took ages for them to get there. So no hot air balloons at the festival, but Iveta, Anna, Julia and I still had a great time in the pretty town!
What's not to like when it snows huge, sparkling, pretty snow flakes whilst you drink hot drinks all wrapped up in our cozy coats!? Plus we had a good laugh taking photos with anything that resembled a hot air balloon as the whole town was decked out to celebrate. So we still got our balloon photos to show people, hopefully they wont notice that they aren't real?
After our jaunt around the land of snow town, we got back into the eventually boiling hot car to then stop in the town of Lausanne on the way home. It's one of the larger towns around Lac Leman. A beautiful place with some rather nice shops!
The lesson of the day was that it's up to you how much you enjoy yourself. Even though I didn't get to see what I had driven 1 hour and 40 minutes for, I still had brilliant day in a gorgeous place with some fantastic people.
Nothing is gonna get me down!
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