I haven’t even started recapping our honeymoon and it’s been almost 2 months, oops. While it may not be super relevant now, I have to share how amazing the Miramonti Boutique Hotel is and how super lucky were were to have the opportunity to stay there.
Sean & I booked our flights to Italy way back in May but outside of knowing we wanted to run the Venice Marathon (recap here) we didn’t have any definite plans on where to go. We finally decided on going to the Dolomiti in Northern Italy for a few days before the marathon.
I’ll discuss the fun we had in Avelengo in a separate post, this post is specifically about the hotel we stayed at because it was that good. After deciding on where to go, we had to find a place to stay so I headed to my go to website, hotels.com to find a spot. I had briefly looked earlier and this hotel had stuck out to me then and it definitely jumped out again.
The Miramonti Boutique Hotel is truly an oasis in the mountains. It is in a little town called Hafling/Avelengo and was really easy to find. My pre-printed directions got us there with no problems. And they have their own private parking built into the mountain which was nice, we didn’t drive at all once we arrive.
Once we made it up to the hotel, we were treated to the most spectacular view. It was a bit cloudy when we arrived, but it kind of made the views even more amazing (until we saw them with clear, bright blue skies). We kind of just stood there admiring the view for a few minutes.
Once inside, there was a huge panoramic window with a couch allowing guests to enjoy the view in the warmth of the building, they had a map that showed the various peaks that you could see. We were greeted by a lovely young girl who spoke German & English, the most surprising thing about this area was that they mostly spoke German vs Italian so we actually spent the whole time just speaking in English.
They offered us a prosecco as a greeting, since we don’t drink we had some fresh squeezed orange juice before being escorted to our room. They had upgraded us to a junior suite since it was our honeymoon, and it was amazing.
At the end of the hallway, our room was huge, a decent size bedroom, a huge bathroom, a large sitting room and then a balcony with a view of the mountains. And they had a delicious fruit display there for us to enjoy.
There were tons of little amenities in the room that added to our stay. Like South Tyrol apples in the room, a complimentary bottle of South Tyrolean water that was refilled every day, blankets for the evening when it was a little cooler. They are very green in Italy, almost all the hotels, this one included have the key in the wall to turn on the electricity.
In the bathroom were huge bottles of Davines shampoo & conditioner and full size bottles of L’Occitane en Provence soap and lotion. A unique thing that you find in most Italian bathrooms is a heated towel rack (we actually used it to dry our clothes).
The bed was comfortable, it’s so funny in Italy they have this thing with twin size beds, a lot of the hotels made a king bed by just pushing two twins together. The Miramonti did this as well, although they made it into a king with sheet connecting the two. This hotel didn’t do a top sheet, there were only 2 down comforters (one for each) and a variety of pillows.
Each evening they would do a turn down service with a little treat and a newsletter showing the weather, some history of the area and an excursion that they offered. It was a nice little touch that I don’t believe I’ve received at another hotel.
All the rooms had a little balcony that overlooked the valley below with an amazing view of the mountains.
Included in our rate was breakfast, and this wasn’t any ordinary continental breakfast. It included lots of pastries, breads, fruits, meats, yogurt and toppings including local honey. You could order any kind of coffee, a pot of American style coffee, cappuccinos, hot tea, etc. as well as egg dishes from your server.
We saw the same servers every day, I really wonder if they ever have a day off because in the 5 days were were there I think we saw the same people all day every day :).
We never ate lunch at the hotel since we had a late breakfast and were always out exploring we never had the opportunity. We did however come in from our adventures every day and have coffee before heading to the pool/spa area.
One of the servers/bartenders really knew how to make amazing coffee, I think it was super amazing because he gave us real cream vs. milk to put in, but seriously we couldn’t wait to get back to enjoy the amazing coffee in the afternoons. Ok, maybe that’s a bit extreme since we were having so much fun exploring in the mountains, but it really was good.
I had a cold of sorts pretty much the whole time we were in Italy and as we know about colds, they sometimes are worse in the morning and the evening. So once we got back, we would grab our robes and head down to the pool to relax before dinner. The hotel restaurants were only open for dinner between 7 – 9pm. The pool wasn’t huge, but it was indoors and heated (not hot tub hot but not freezing either). We would do laps and just relax in there.
There were a lot of lounge chairs where you could just relax and they even had subzero sleeping bags so if you wanted to go outside and lay on the lounges outside to look at the stars you could. They had a note saying that they washed the sleeping bags every day. We never did that, it was pretty cold (in the low 30s) while we were there and with me being sick I didn’t really want to chance it.
On our second day there, we discovered another area with a steam room, 2 dry saunas and more private sitting areas, I believe that kids were not allowed in that area. Back in this area it was similar to a spa waiting area where there was hot tea, dried apple slices and maybe some nuts available to snack on. The apple slices were super yummy, made from the local apples.
Now, being that we are from the states and in co-ed areas like this at spas I’ve been everyone wears their clothes, it has to be mentioned that Europeans are much more open and not nearly as modest. We saw both men & women sitting in the saunas naked or walking around with no clothes on it this back area. We never had anyone in the steam room or sauna with us, but during high season, I’m sure that there would have been. We were probably the only people there in our bathing suits in the sauna but it was more comfortable for us.
We would go to the pool/spa area every day and then head over to dinner.
Miramonti has 3 different restaurants. It’s interesting because it’s not a big place, but they had the Panorama Restaurant which is their fine dining restaurant (seats only 30 guests) and I’m sure in the summer it was spectacular but since it was fall and it got dark early there wasn’t much to see. The Panorama Restaurant is listed in the Michelin guide. In high season, I’m sure having reservations would be necessary, but since we there during a down time (mid October) neither the Panorama or Klassik restaurants were filled any of our 4 nights there.
We ate at the Panorama Restaurant on the first night. Sean & I each got soup for our first course and then shared an entree, we weren’t incredibly hungry. They started us off with an amuse bouche, she told us what it was, but I didn’t really understand her. It tasted good though.
They also brought out a bread box with various butters & cheeses.
The biggest surprise was when we got our soup. I guess I haven’t eaten at very many fine dining restaurants or I just haven’t gotten soup at the ones I have been to because they set down bowls and I was a bit confused. Mine had dried mushrooms & a circle piece of what looked like butter and Sean’s pumpkin soup only had the butter looking piece. I was like hold on a second what is this, but then they came back with the actual broth/soup and poured it in to the bowls. Too funny.
For the entree they were nice enough to serve our entree on 2 stone plates. It was beef chuck chuck flap with mashed pumpkin, purple potato chips and black truffle.
Of the entree selections this was the one that looked the most appealing to us, the beef while tender, we found out was boiled, which is an interesting preparation. I’ve eaten at a lot of steakhouses and here it seems we eat a lot more grilled beefed.
For dessert, we had a berry oatmeal parfait of sorts. It was tasty but nothing special.
I think the best part were the amazing freshly made vanilla macaroons that they presented us at the end of the meal. They were so soft and chewy. I wish we could have had them every night.
We finished off our meal with espressos, we loved how they served your coffee on these cute silver trays. It was super fancy.
The second restaurant is Miramonti Stube is a very small room with I believe 4 tables so reservations are necessary. We never ate here but they did offer the traditional and local South Tyrolean cuisine in the Klassik room if we had wanted to try the menu. We looked at the menu one night, but decided to stick with the Klassik menu.
The largest and most popular restaurant is the Klassik. Here they have a half board meal which is 4 courses that changed every night. It was 35 Euro per person or you could choose to have a more ala carte meal.
We ate here the remaining 3 nights we were there. We had a variety of dishes. I think some of our favorites was the Caprese with the huge piece of Buffalo Mozzarella with super tasty Roma tomatoes & a basil coulis.
Another favorite, didn’t look the most appetizing but it was delicious, there were three traditional South Tyrolean dumplings. There was a butter & herb dumpling, one with spec (a type of bacon) and a spinach dumpling.
We had both of these appetizers twice during our stay they were that good.
Each night we shared an entree, first night beef, second night pork and third night sea bass. Now if you have ever been to Italy and had fish, you might recall that they bring the fish out with the head on, etc. Well I didn’t even think about this until after we ordered because Sean hasn’t been there before & I wasn’t sure how he would react lol. Fortunately Sea Bass is a pretty big fish so they just gave us a filet and it was already deboned, I was a little nervous about that.
Desserts at the Klassic restaurant included an amazing apple cobbler with ice cream, a chocolate torte with sauteed pears and then on the last night we splurged and had two desserts, a traditional tiramisu and a chocolate mousse.
The hotel offers a lot of activities, forest therapy, bike rentals, there is a horse farm near by that offers discounts for hotel guests. But really for us none of that was necessary as we just explored the nearby trails every day.
I have to say that we were so spoiled adventuring in Avelengo & staying at the Miramonti Hotel that the rest of the trip while nice never measured up. I’m so glad that we had the opportunity to enjoy this amazing part of the world.
I would totally recommend the Miramonti hotel and in turn Avelengo – Halfing to anyone looking for a relaxing place to vacation.
