Brisk mountain air

I'm glad to be back in the mountains. I feel very near the sky in the midst of these massive groups of mountains soaring up to the clouds. Yesterday, with sunny weather (24C) we could walk in "Singapore clothes" Today it is 14C and raining, so I had to wear 3 layers of woolies to take the cable car up to a height of 2005m, and then walked downhill for 148m. As Susan knows, downhill means uphill later, but I was happy that it was not very steep and and could do it in my own time. I do feel fitter than 2 weeks ago, but everyone still seems to walk faster than I can. Today I walked on my own, as I was quite worried about the "450m of ascent" for the "easy" walkers! It was good to exercise my brain to co-ordinate the transport, as opposed to following the leader all week!. After coming down to Ortisei from the cable car, I thought of walking on the old railway track back to Selva, where we are based. I could only manage about 2km of walking, and then I had to take the bus. The villages all seem a bit quiet. The summer season has not opened here yet.
Yesterday was quite a nice walk until the steep uphill before lunch. Fortunately after lunch it was a very enjoyable and long downhill, passing St Jakob's church with a small cemetery where everyone was "lying peacefully" in full view of one of the prominent mountains here: Sassolunga
We are quite an international group this week, with 3 new walkers from US and 2 walkers from NZ joining us, together with more couples from the UK.
The 4-course dinner here is just too much. The chef is excellent and I'm sorry to have to eat only 2 of his dishes every night!! The hotel has been used by this walking company for years, and they are very used to a large group. Service is excellent. Now, I'm to my 2-course dinner...did I mention the salad buffet...??