We met Kevin and Amy at 9:00 for breakfast, which was a very nice buffet.
Hiking was on the agenda and we even had a map. The trail starts just behind our hotel so off we go.

It was fairly well marked and pretty steep going up in some rocky areas but we knew we were close when we saw this sign:

It took us a little less than 2 hours to arrive at the Rifugio (a small restaurant in the middle of hiking country) on Lake Magletta. We sat on the lakeside and talked and laughed and rested for a while before moving on to a simple lunch of salad and a cured meat platter at the restaurant.
There was a tiny little rustic church up there:

The views were sublime. It was truly beautiful.

We saw tons of wild flowers, just like Marta said we would, even wild azalea.
We were almost all the way down when we started hearing something that sounded like a bunch of huge chimes. As we got closer we saw it was a small heard of grazing cows, all with varying sizes of bells around their necks. The sound was all new, euphonious and surrounding us.

Finally we saw the “cow man” and his dog; I talked to him a bit in his heavily accented Italian.

For the afternoon we indulged ourselves in the “wellness center” of the hotel–in door pool, saunas, hydro foot massage etc. In our big white terry cloth robes we felt–well–indulgent. Everyone seems happy.
In the early evening we drove down to the sleepy in the summer, ski town, Madonna in Campiglio to walk around.

The whole town is one hotel after another and most were closed. We window shopped a little, got some money from the bancomat and drove back up to a restaurant we had seen. It was early for dinner–just after 7:00 and we were the only ones in the place. The waiter said they had fresh local “finferli” (chanterelle mushrooms) and porcini. So we all had something with mushrooms. Amy had them with the local polenta taragna which had brown specks of buckwheat flour in with the corn meal. I had a plat of cooked veggies and mushroom soup and the guys had tagiatelli with mushrooms. I really enjoyed the dinner.
View from the restaurant:

We left just in time to make it back to the hotel to watch Italy defeat Germany in the Euro cup semi final. How exciting!