Mongolfiere over Mondovi
At the end of a week of unseasonably warm, clear days the skies above Mondovi filled with brightly colored orbs that floated gently overhead—le mongolfiere sono arrivate! The annual hot-air balloon festival brought nearly 30 ballooning teams from all over Europe to Mondovi for two days. (The Italian word for hot-air balloon is “mongolfiera,” after the 18th-century French inventors of the craft, the brothers Mongolfier.)
The staging area was in the lower town, in a small park surrounded by apartment blocks, and it was amazing to see how little space the crews needed to inflate and launch the great things. Jim and I chatted awhile with one group of English balloonists who live not far from Mondovi, and they were so jolly that we sort of adopted them—they became “our team” to watch for on the ground and in the air. We chased them by car across the hills around town for most of Saturday afternoon, picked them out of the crowd on Sunday morning and tracked their progress until they landed just before dusk on Sunday evening.
The mongolfiere added one more element of magic to this picturesque town—colorful globes suspended in the spring-like breeze, with the medieval piazza and the Alps beyond. I hope you enjoy this glimpse at some of the sights that made us especially happy all weekend.
