The road up was mostly fog and patience. By the time the guesthouse appeared, a wooden house with a tin roof and a dog asleep in the doorway, the city felt like a rumour we had once believed.
We had planned nothing beyond staying three nights. That turned out to be the plan. Mornings began with the kettle, not the phone. Breakfast was whatever the host was already cooking, eaten on a porch that faced a valley filling slowly with light.
A good trip is measured in unhurried mornings, not in sights collected.
On the second day we walked to a village we could see from the porch and discovered it was much further than it looked. Nobody minded. The walk became the day, and the day became the story we will actually tell.
Travel advice usually promises efficiency. This trip offered the opposite, and it is the one we keep returning to in conversation. Go somewhere close. Stay longer than feels sensible. Let the kettle take its time.