Up, up, and away!

We were intrigued when we first arrived in town (can it be nearly a month ago already?!) by posters in many shop windows about "La Montgolfiade." After some investigating, we learned that our area has a vibrant community of hot air ballooning enthusiasts who participate in an association begun way back in 1901. A few years ago the group initiated an annual hot air balloon festival, a.k.a. La Montgolfiade. (In France, hot air balloons are called montgolfières; two Frenchmen, the Montgolfière brothers, invented and flew the first ever hot air balloon in the 1700s.)

Obviously there was no question as to whether we'd be in the crowd for the evening flight spectacular this weekend! Side note: the field is near the racecourse, i.e., the "hippodrome," and William finds this word hilarious. Cracks him up every single time! What's even funnier for us is that he pronounces it "hippodwome" since he still usually pronounces his Rs as Ws.   :)

When we arrived, the field was covered in the flattened balloons, laid out ready to go...

This one was filled first and lifted off solo, with great ceremony. We think(?) maybe a couple of people won raffle tickets to be on it? We arrived sort of when all that was happening and couldn't make out much from the loudspeaker announcements.

Then things started to get exciting as, in a matter of minutes, all of the balloons began growing!

Before we knew it, they were going up, one after another. 

The kids loved the bug one.  :)

The atmosphere was festive.

We missed it (grr, if only we understood the language better!) but we realized from the parking area that the very last balloon had a woman hanging from cords on the bottom doing an acrobatic / trapeze-type show. We'd wandered off before it went up, thinking it was a straggler balloon that was having technical difficulties!  :)  Anyway, you can see the ropes hanging down in the photo above although can't really make out the person's shape. We kept glimpsing her high above the town as we drove home; she was swinging and flipping and twirling the entire way!

Seeing as we hadn't stayed to watch her, we wished we'd been hustling home just a little faster instead of dilly-dallying around the tents and activities for ten or fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, it turns out the skyful of balloons was drifting pretty much directly over the old part of town and straight above our house! Upon getting home, we dashed down the street, although we were a little too late to see them at their best by then. Not that we can complain one bit or have any regrets. What an incredible treat the evening was! For a small, sleepy, rural town, Thouars so far has treated us incredibly well.