The moment you first feel that your trip is soon to end is … a moment. It can give rise to philosophical musing if inclined. Give rise to reflections about what travel does to you: to yourself, to your intimacies with a spouse or lover (one and the same?), and to relationships with others (traveling companions and strangers met along the way).

The journey offers so many opportunities to connect in ways outside habitual paths. To turn discovery into the shock and pleasure of rediscovery: the new prompts … reinvigorates what has been forgotten.

We’re going up Receida today, fairly close to home on a tram, which is packed when we board. The day is pleasant but very hazy, which spoils 360 degree panoramas that would be spectacular from the easy number 35 trail we take to the west.

The trail passes a Refugio and ends at a tiny church. A large blonde wood frame on one wall has 3×3-inch photographs from 2023 to the present of people (we presume local) who have died.

A bookshelf behind the pew nearest the door contains several chronological photo albums, each about seven to eight years thick.

We climb the steep, rocky continuation of 35 to a large wooden weathered statue of Christ on the cross. It’s very well done … affecting whether or not you believe.

The trail now is easy and mostly a gentle downhill stroll except for the dense gray clouds rolling over the entire valley.

They obscure all horizons and distant peals of thunder rumble from several directions. A few drops for five minutes signal a stronger deluge to come. We walk pretty rikky tik and hope springs that we’ll find the tram down just around the trail’s next corner.

But the heavens open just as we’re about 20 minutes from the lift and we must take a difficult, steep, twisting hobbit-like trail of coursing water and mud through dense twisted pines to a field we must cross to a small wooden hut where scads of hikers have gathered to stay out of the now pouring rain.

At first we sit outside under a small overhang. The rain becomes hail.

Amazingly, everyone milling about and sitting cheek to jowl at plank tables inside is kind and welcoming in several languages. Just pouring buckets outside. We get very lucky and sit at a bench table with Finns, Germans, Italians and Asians.

Wine, hot chocolate, sausages with roasted potatoes and conversation about global green-energy subsidies. We wait out the storm for more than an hour before leaving the refuge and finding the tram down a hill and three minutes away.

Back at the ranch so to speak, we begin to pack, arranging clothing for one afternoon tomorrow in Innsbruck before our flight to Vienna where we will spend the night before flying home the next morning. Then downstairs to the outdoor tables by the bar so Dani doesn’t get rusty making Hugo’s and Negronis. (We are soooo gracious.)

We meet a lovely SF Bay couple and their two sons. They went to Cuba back in 2001, and he is a serious collector of Bordeaux wine, so much to talk about before tonight’s “gala” dinner. (Banter sample (his name is B for short: Me: Wow you’ve done a lot of exotic travel. B: Yes, quite fun really. Me: All over? Asia? B: oh yes. A lot to Bordeaux naturally. Me: Wowzer, you must run several hedge funds B: Just one actually.)

Dinner starts with free Prosecco in flutes and proceeds through delicious carrot and ginger soup and filet. We exchange some of our Prager Gruner for some of B’s Chateau Giscours. Cynthia disappears for 15 minutes to talk to another table while David waits … and waits … and waits (my sly reference to the end of Casablanca’s opening voiceover.)

It’s all good and David somehow resists asking B to join him for some Cointreau on ice but the better angels wisely counsel No.

And to bed.