Acrophobia, shmacrophobia! Just do it!

Whichever way you spell it, Brugge or Bruges, and whether you see it from ground level or from a bird's-eye view, this little Medieval town in the northwest of Belgium is so picturesque and pretty that it should be on every traveller's schedule. It's only small, almost circular in area, surrounded by water and it's a bit like Venice in that there are lots of little bridges to cross the waterways as you explore the rows of quaint little red-roofed brick houses one after the other, as charming and romantic as a fairytale from a children's picture book.

Like many people I didn't know Bruges existed until In Bruges, (Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes) but after seeing it in the movie I knew I absolutely had to see it in real life. It has not disappointed - the opposite has happened, actually - I've fallen head over heels in love with it.

I'm scared of heights. Nevertheless, when I heard it's possible to go hot air ballooning over Bruges, I knew I needed to bite the bullet - we had to do it. The heights thing turned out to be completely irrelevant. There's a scientific reason for it not mattering, something to do with the way the brain registers altitude or distance or something, but the main thing is that you shouldn't let fear get in the way of doing something that's guaranteed to be awesome.

Last night the weather forecast was not favourable and we'd resigned ourselves to the flight (which we booked 6 months ago) being cancelled but we woke early this morning to find that we were going ahead and would be collected at 7:30am from our hotel to take the short drive out of town to where we would set up the balloon and take off. As it turned out the weather was ideal and we had the most brilliant morning! We flew across 30 kilometres and landed next to an onion field in Holland - yes, really! Champagne and pastries as a picnic breakfast were a bonus.

Helping to set up.

Onions! Recently harvested and awaiting collection.

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