Among many other(mostly weird) things I search on Google as a mum, one day I was searching for some balloon prints to hang up on our wall for the little boy at home. Somehow, dearest google came up with the “Balloon fiesta event in Bristol” in the search results and this was going to happen in early August. So, with much excitement, I clicked on the event webpage and read more. And Immediately forwarded the link to my husband at work who probably thought it was another shopping link and ignored it. Only when he came home, I told him more and we decided to book for that weekend getaway.

So we reached Bristol on friday evening and the city was bustling with good crowd and had a wonderful vibe. The hotel that we stayed in was Radisson Blu, in the heart of Bristol. Honestly, we did not have much of a choice when we were looking to book.Our experience overall was only below satisfactory as it was quite a lot of disappointment to have got stuck in a tiny lift on a saturday afternoon with a toddler in one hand and shopping bags on the other. Very poorly structured and so dodgy for a building that had about 20 floors and with just one small lift which would only accommodate four adults. And after an hour of feeling suffocated and my boy almost halfway through his nap, we managed to get out with the help of firemen. Yes, firemen come for emergency situations when engineers are busy enjoying their weekends. So, we reached our room and In the middle of our afternoon slumber, we were woken up by room service only to find a large piece of brownie and some other goodies as a way of apologising to the earlier incident. Although, I was a little too proud and a bit upset, I did manage to finish quite a lot of brownie in few minutes. Oh that was one strange afternoon!

By evening, it was time for us to visit the balloon fiesta site which was about fifteen minutes away from our hotel but took us nearly an hour with all the traffic. We were finally glad when we got near to the hot air balloon take off site. The entire place was buzzing with such noise and so much crowd we haven’t seen in a while in the UK. As with all other events, there were so many food stalls and all of them had queues of at least 10 people or more before you could have your turn. My husband and son found a nice spot to sit down and enjoy the view while I stood in the queue for about 20 minutes for a bowl of chips(actually 2) and some water. In the meantime, the balloons started to take off one by one and my darling boy was oh so happy to see them flying away so gently. I mean who wouldn’t think it is not a pretty sight with all those lovely colourful things flying above you ? Here are some pictures from the event.

One must start to look for booking a ride early summer as they get sold out quite quickly. We are hoping to go back again next year or so to fly away looking like little people (Yes,I think we are quite big and we eat too much)

Having seen enough balloons everywhere, we thought the next day we would drive off to the local Zoo before we head back into london. The highlight of the day for me was seeing a banana leaf plant in one corner of this zoo besides seeing the happiness on my little ones face when he saw lions and monkeys. For my husband, it was the cornish clotted cream ice cream. Overall, a fun day out in the zoo.

Bristol is such a lovely place to go if only you manage to find a good car parking spot and of course a hotel to stay with proper lifts.