The Alpine Boutique "Villa Gabriela" is a beautiful Villa nestled near the Seiser Alm in the Dolomites. The air is clean, fresh and everywhere you look is beauty. The Villa itself is beautiful and very well maintained, and the food was fabulous. I highly recommend this place, you cannot go wrong here. You can embrace the rugged peaks and fragrant meadows and it offers easy to challenging hiking trails for the adventure seekers. Very Beautiful place.
We loved our time at Villa Gabriela. There was simply nothing to fault and a first class experience from start to finish from every angle. Location - lovely, quality of facilities - perfect, Food - 1/2 board - AMAZING, Friendly and professional service - All the time. Value for money - definitely. We were after a quality, comfortable experience in a nice location for our first trip to the Dolomites. Villa Gabriela delivered on all accounts. Would we stay here again - in a heart beat and are planning to return next time we go to Europe.
This was our second stay at Villa Gabriela, and once again it was delightful. Daniel and Gabi are gracious hosts, and Gabriela's cooking was delicious. The Dolomites are stunningly beautiful, and this villa is the perfect base for exploring the region.
We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at Gabriela's wonderful hotel.
The ambience is charmingly alpine, but possibly not to all tastes!
Rooms varied in size. Ours didn't have a view but this was made up for by the enormous size, separate sitting room, outside sitting area and sauna!
Public areas are luxurious and the outside terrace a wonderful space for pre-dinner drinks and breakfast.
Food is fabulous - 3 nights is the minimum booking and half board is the order of the day. With 5 or 6 courses it is best to plan some activities while you are here.
This was a fantastic place to stay and clearly there are many repeat bookings so you really will need to book ahead.
I must say that overall we had a lovely stay!
The room was clean and stylish, and we had a nice balcony that overlooked the hills.
We had the half-board, and the food was absolutely delicious! We only had two other meals in our two-week trip that came even close to what we had for dinner here!
So why not five stars? Two small things, but they definitely put a damper on our trip:
1) We arrived home early from hiking (5:15ish) so that we could use the 'spa' because it is only open for a few hours each day. (I think 3:30-6:30? Can't remember.) It is requested that you go in a robe and slippers and bring the bag with towels. We get ready and then descend (at 5:30) to the spa to enjoy an hour of the sauna before it closed-- only to find it completely shut down!!!!! Incredibly disappointing for our honeymoon!
2) We return up stairs to shower and such since we can't use the spa, and about 6:20 there is a knock on the door. My husband was taking a nap and I was in lounge clothes checking emails. Who is at the door? A staff member telling us that dinner was already being served NOW! An hour early!! I had to wake my husband up and I had to throw on decent clothes, so we could run down there.
I must admit that it was our host's birthday, so I understand that they wanted to have dinner early. That is fine.
What I do not find acceptable is that we spoke to both the owners at breakfast that morning and said hi as we came in at 5:15, and we were NOT told either time that dinner would be served early!! It was just ridiculous that it was never mentioned to us until it *was already being served -- and hour early*!
My husband joked that it was good that the sauna was not working, or we would have walked up the stairs in robes only to be greeted by a dining room full of people eating!
One other thing, the staff member who knocked on the door to tell us that dinner was currently being served did apologize that the sauna was not working. She said that we should have told them that we had wanted to use it that morning. What is the point of having printed 'open hours' when you have to ask them to open it??
