Ok, lets be real. I am pretty picky when it comes to heights. I can do rollercoasters, for the most part. But put me on the swings at a fair and I’m losing my mind. Mickey’s Fun Wheel at Disney’s California Adventure… I pretty much lost my shit. But when it comes to looking at views, the higher the better. In my early 20s my friends and I went to Punta Cana and we parasailed. The entire time I kept asking my tandem parasailer: “what if the ropes break?” A little morbid, I know. She still gets mad when I bring it up.

Hot air balloons? I just don’t know if I can do it, but from the ground… I am all about that view. A few months ago I watched the Bucketlist Family go to Cappadocia and now I am obsessed. I need to get there and see the balloons over the desert sky. It looks absolutely amazing. But for now, I will spend a weekend in upstate Connecticut at the hot air balloon festival.

My friend and I went up on a Saturday afternoon to Litchfield County where we checked into the cutest little bed and breakfast. This was our first B&B experience. The old house at the Hopkins Inn was a 19^th century country home overlooking Lake Waramaug in Warren, CT. We were lucky enough to get one of the front bedrooms and have a lake view room. Also lucky for us was that no one else was in the room that shared the semi-private bathroom with us.

One thing that I learned about B&B life is there are no frills. You just get the bare bones compared to the fancy hotel I was staying in earlier in the week for my work trip. Our kitschy little room was a pretty good size and simply just had one king sized bed, a chair in the corner and a dresser.

We had no idea when booking the bed and breakfast but it was right across the street from a winery with the same name, which ended up being the perfect hiding spot when it spontaneously down poured for about an hour before we headed over to the Hot Air Balloon Festival. We headed over to Goshen Fairgrounds but unfortunately because of the unpredictable weather, the balloons weren’t able to go up. But they blew up and in front of the stormy sky, the views were absolutely stunning.

The next morning we woke up at 5am and headed back over to the fairgrounds. (You see why we needed a place to crash up there?) Anyone who has been in a hot air balloon knows that most of the launches are at a crazy godforsaken hour. But we literally rolled out of bed in our PJs and headed over and up they went. There was about 9 balloons and they blew up and launched one by one. It was gorgeous. My only complaint: where was the coffee trucks!!

We zoomed back to the inn to crash for a few hours and when we got up we headed down for breakfast. Amazing. And when you eat any meal with my bestie, Michelle, you know you are going to get one of everything, so that’s what we did. We got pancakes, hash browns, toast, an omelet and eggs. I wasn’t complaining. Everything was delicious and sitting outside on the front porch of the house, overlooking the lake was a great way to wake up.