Flying in an airplane is always a treat, of course.

But after taking our first hot air balloon ride, the Stuck at the Airport team now knows that this form of transportation is nothing less than magical.

As part of an abbreviated Viking Nile River cruise onboard the just-christened Viking Sobek, we joined hundreds of other very early morning risers at a giant field in Luxor, Egypt.

In the dark, we could just make out big, dumpster-sized boxes tipped on their sides. These turned out to be the big 16-person baskets that would sit beneath the hot air balloons.

The piles of colored fabric strewn around the field turned out to the be the uninflated balloons.

It was calm for a bit as vans pulled up and dropped off cluster after cluster of sleepy tourists.

Then, clearly the “It’s OK to fly” signal arrived from the local airport and hundreds of men began scrambling to light burners that sent flames and hot air up into the balloons to inflate them.

Our group was helped into one of the dozens of balloon baskets and off we went into the sky, floating over not just homes and fields, but also the archeological site known as the Valley of the Kings.

The area was a burial ground for many pharaoh, queens, high priests and other members of Egypt’s nobility from about 1550 to 1069 BC and there are more than 60 mapped tombs in the area.

And sure enough, that’s what we could see as we joined the flock of colorful balloons floating, ascending and descending for more than a hour in the early morning air.

All in all, a pretty great way to travel.

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