Saturday marked the start of the 40th International Hot Air Balloon Festival in the ski\u00a0resort of Chateau d\u2019Oex in western Switzerland.<\/p>\n
The nine-day event draws hundreds of hot air balloons as well as pilots from about 20 countries. Special activities typically include tethered rides, a children\u2019s day on Wednesday and a night-time show on Friday. The\u00a0hot air balloon festival wraps up on February 4.<\/p>\n
Weather conditions on opening day were less than optimal, with fog in the morning and unsafe ground conditions for tethered rides.<\/p>\n
In 1999, it was from Chateau d\u2019Oex that adventurers Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones \u2013 piloting the Breitling Orbiter \u2013 set off for the first world tour in a hot air balloon. In more recent years, Piccard has been championing the use of solar power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday marked the start of the 40th International Hot Air Balloon Festival in the ski\u00a0resort of Chateau d\u2019Oex in western Switzerland. The nine-day event draws hundreds of hot air balloons as well as pilots from about 20 countries. Special activities typically include tethered rides, a children\u2019s day on Wednesday and a night-time show on Friday. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Hundreds of hot air balloons glide over Swiss Alps","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-video","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-fiesta","post_format-post-format-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-31-at-10.12.41.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3RIC2-yv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2141,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2139\/revisions\/2141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/balloonteam.net\/montgolfier\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}