SNAPSHOTS: A HOLIDAY IN THE HILLS

After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb - Nelson Mandela

Different people take different kinds of holidays. There are beach people and city people. Some scuba dive, others soak in spas. I struggle with some sort of Austro-Hungarian hangover since I keep turning up in or around the empire for every vacation since graduation.

This winter I disappeared to the hills for a little bit for a holiday unlike any I've ever taken and it was wonderful. Doing something completely out of character taught me so much more than Vienna could. It sounds like the kind of advice you find on the side of a coffee cup and ordinarily I really resent proverbs. But cliches become that way because they work, right? More coffee cup print! Before someone has the good sense to clobber me I'll get to telling you more about my holiday. It might sound too sedate but I loved it.

I got to stay in a beautiful house and wake up to a view like this -

 

I took some long, quiet (apart from my panting) walks down paths like these - 

 

I saw nature being incredible in ways I hadn't seen before -

 

 At the end of the day I watched the sun set - 

 

The evenings sometimes came with this:

After dinner I curled up in front of a blazing fire with a good book. The Mortdecai Trilogy, I recommend it strongly to fans of crime fiction. 

 

 

I was asleep by 9 on most nights but I managed to knock 4 books off my reading list and learnt I might even be a mountain person.