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Rini Hotel NotesA practical notebook of small hotels across Europe

Shelf III · Mountain Stays

Mountain stays in the Alps and Pyrenees

Family hotels and gasthaeuser under EUR 120 in the Slovenian Alps, the Hautes-Pyrenees at Cauterets and the Dolomite valleys of Alta Pusteria.

Wooden family hotel balcony with folded blankets and geraniums looking over a green alpine valley and a stone church steeple

Mountains reward readers of the calendar. The walking season in the Julian Alps runs from late June to the end of September; the High Pyrenees empty by mid October; the Dolomite valleys hold two seasons and charge for both. The houses covered here are family run, usually under twenty rooms, and the better ones still cook a dinner that makes the half board worth choosing on the heavy walking days.

The notes track the details that decide a mountain night: which rooms overheat under a sloped roof in August, how the bus or railway actually reaches the valley, and when the season turns the price. In the mountains the last kilometre is always the heaviest, so the notes treat the final approach as part of the rate.

On this shelf

  1. Family gasthaus in the Alta Pusteria valley with painted facade, wooden shutters, hay meadow in flower and Dolomite towers above the larches

    Dolomites rooms under EUR 120: the Alta Pusteria valley

    The Dolomites read expensive until the map opens at Alta Pusteria: Dobbiaco, Villabassa and Sesto keep gasthaeuser rooms under EUR 120 beneath the same walls the lift towns charge triple for.

  2. Slate roofed family hotel on a Cauterets street with mountain bikes chained at the door, geranium boxes and high Pyrenean slopes behind the rooftops

    Cauterets family hotels: the High Pyrenees under EUR 110

    Cauterets is a thermal town built to receive guests: family hotels under EUR 110 with breakfast, the Pont d'Espagne walks at the valley head and the Cirque de Gavarnie an hour further up the road.

  3. Guesthouse garden at Lake Bohinj with wooden balconies, white blankets airing on rails and the green water and Julian peaks behind the meadow

    Slovenian Alps rooms under EUR 115: Bohinj or Kranjska Gora

    The Julian Alps still price like a family business: doubles under EUR 115 at Lake Bohinj and Kranjska Gora, dinners worth the half board on the far walking days, and a season that runs from late June to the end of September.

The neighbouring shelves, Breakfast Notes and Where to Stay, work the same method from other angles, and the way every note is written is set out on the about page.