We wake to sharp peaks etched against a misty sky with deep green spruce forests on hillsides below the crags. Beautiful day.

Breakfast is self-service on tables that include several varieties of fruit, cheese, breads, eggs, bacon, muesli and a three-jet croissant injector if you want to insert pistachio, apricot and/or vanilla creams into your croissant.

We group with Darrell and Nora at an outside table and do some planning — the rose farm tour? The alpaca farm visit? The tree hugging walk? The wood carving instruction? Etc. We consult a woman at the reception desk who tells us that we should not over plan. She said that if we have 3 beautiful walks we will have had a wonderful visit. She is conscious of David’s leg and says one cannot break off from the 5-6 hour guided hikes. She suggests we go on our own to Seiser Alm/Alpe di Suisi for our first day. It turns out to be a great suggestion.

We walk through town to the church, take a left, cross an overpass and on to the red gondola. The town is distinctly Tyrolean in countless ways.

At the gondola ticket office we get 6-day lift tickets that say “eighteen lifts”. “Eighteen lifts?” We ask the ticket agent, “does that mean that going up and returning down is 2 lifts or 1?” He looks truly puzzled, says, “Well, yes, you go up. You go down.” We say, “Sure, but does that count as two lifts or only one?”

He looks at us ever more strangely and consults a fellow ticket agent. She asks us to repeat our question and listens carefully as we do. “There are 18 lifts in the valley that are covered by the pass,” she tells us. “You can ride any of them as much as you want up or down.”

We all laugh at our misinterpretations and suppositions. Kwazzzzy furrrigners.

Up and up and up we go to where the red gondola lets us out at a multi-storied restaurant and a gravel veranda with a great view of Sassolungo, one of the larger mountains, and its brother and sister peaks: Cinquetta and Grohman.

We take trail # 9 and walk along a paved path with the jagged peaks to our left, beyond a broad verdant valley so green and perfectly manicured that it looks unreal: a set constructed for such movies as the Sound of Music. Beautiful, serene, majestic all at once. Look at the photos!

David decides he wants to live here.

We stop at a refugio and load up on espresso, aperol spritz, and a coke.

After taking the gondola down to town, David and Darrel head back to the hotel. Nora and Cynthia opt for walking through town and shopping. Lots of sports equipment and clothing stores. Even more housewares stores.

The place settings for dinner are charming.