If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR261.68), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Schoolhouse turned après-ski and -hike hideaway Alpenloge sits at the junction of four countries (Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein and Germany) with giant Alpine peaks rudely interrupting all topographies. It’s tempting to think Heidi plaits and dirndls, especially with wildflower-strewn, goat-grazed meadows sprawling out before you, but this welcoming Bavarian stay has its own sense of identity, bolstered by furnishings from local carpenters, honesty bars stocked with regional wines and spirits, and a chef whose commitment to as-close-to-0km-as-possible produce is only matched by his zeal for fantastical food. Owners Anja and Michael will practically welcome you into the family (and they know all the best spots to explore close by), plus with the lodge's cosy basement spa, and peaceful-as-can-be nature-inspired rooms – with beds that are the stuff of chic dreams – you'll easily allow yourself to be herded into the fold.
Smith Extra
Get this when you book through us:
Locally handmade chocolates, a fruit basket in your room and a glass each of secco wine made near Lake Constance. GoldSmiths staying three nights or more will also get a €50 credit towards dining in the hotel restaurant
11am, but flexible, subject to availability on the day and a charge after 1pm. Earliest check-in, 4pm.
Prices
Double rooms from £239.79 (€280), including tax at 7 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €2.20 per person per night on check-out.
More details
Rates include breakfast, an abundant spread of Alpine smoked meats, cheeses and butter; bakery loaves with homemade marmalade; hand-picked fruit; eggs as you like them; smoothies; and à la carte dishes. A two-night minimum stay is required.
Also
Some rooms are suitable for guests with mobility issues, and there’s a lift which has tactile and acoustic signage.
At the hotel
Spa with a sauna and steam bath, mountain-view terrace with loungers and a barbecue, grassy meadows, lounge, kitchen garden, free high-speed, fibre-optic WiFi. In rooms: TV, Nespresso machine, tea-making kit, bathrobes and slippers, free bottled water, and all-natural Metzler bath products. Loges Seven Eight and Nine also have a kitchenette.
Our favourite rooms
Rooms and suites look out in all directions, and most have a view that’ll get you strapping on your boots and knapsack; however, for in-your-face, wake-up-to Alpine panoramas, the south-west-facing rooms are in the sweet spot. To ensure you get your 40 winks, each room has a bed from German maker Schramm, and all the rooms have carefully considered colour schemes and furnishings (we like the fleecy chairs and fluffy stools some have), but ‘Loges’ Seven, Eight and Nine feel like your own après-piste-ready penthouse, with a kitchenette and dining area, and some of the best aspects from the top.
Spa
You’ll get that rosy-cheeked glow from valderi-valdera-ing your way across the Alps, but the Bathhouse spa will give it a boost, with its window-walled sauna (there’s not much a mountainous vista can’t cure), saltwater steam room, top-to-toe massage techniques, and fireplace-warmed relaxation room.
Packing tips
What to bring depends on if you’re planning to conquer the mountains or just ride a toboggan and build a snowman – either way, sturdy boots and layers of clothing will come in handy.
Also
There’s a small boutique where you can buy Metzler bath products and stylish backpacks alongside other local goods.
While over-eights can stay, Alpenloge isn’t really the kinda place for ‘kinder’.
Sustainability efforts
Alpenloge looks after the environment as well as its guests. The schoolhouse was renovated using energy-saving Passivhaus principles, and climate-control panels measure CO2 and recycle up to 72 per cent of the air (although when the weather’s fine, guests just throw open the large windows), heating and fires use wood pellets, lights are LED and sensor-activated, the slippers are in your room are made from natural materials (linen, coconut fibres), and the all-natural bath products are made nearby using whey from regional farms. ‘Local’ is a word you’ll hear a lot around here because nearly everything is, from the wines and spirits in the honesty bars, to the furnishings, and everything on the menu in the kitchen, where fish come from Lake Constance, steaks from the neighbours, and some veggies, herbs and fruits from onsite.
Overlooking the meadows in summer, in the glass-walled Conservatory come winter.
Dress Code
Haute-herder (yodel-ay-ee-yodel-ay-ee-hoo).
Hotel restaurant
Allgäu’s alps are all the decoration Alpenloge’s just-for-guests restaurant needs – in the conservatory, window walls offer spectacular sawtooth panoramas (there’s also a cosy lounge space, where guests can dine or enjoy pre-dinner drinks at tables made by local carpenters). However, chef Mark Beastall can wrest your gaze from view to plate; his daily-changing, seasonal three- and four-course menus are playfully plated, strikingly using the colours and shapes of flavourful local produce (some grown in the kitchen garden). Think yellow-and-green scales of sliced courgette; garlic panna cotta sprouting edible flowers on pumpernickel-crumb soil; citrus sorbets served in a ‘dish’ of frozen grapefruit peel; apple-crumble soufflé; a cep mushroom made out of chocolate and toasted passionfruit marshmallow, or a hearty whole roast quail. It’s closed on Thursdays and Sundays so time your stay accordingly if you want the likes of pumpkin-and-pear arancini or coconut-and-mushroom falafel. And, in summer, the barbecue on the terrace gets fired up.
Hotel bar
There are two honesty bars stocked with local wines – many made on the banks of Lake Constance – spirits, and beers. And the local secco (a gently sparkling wine) is a firm favourite with guests. Can’t find your pick of poisons? Just ask. And if there’s anything you especially like, let the staff know and they’ll make sure it’s stocked.
Last orders
The restaurant is closed on Thursdays and Sundays. Otherwise breakfast is from 8.30am till 10.30am and dinner orders are from 6.30pm. Lunch isn't served onsite.
Alpenloge sits in the west of the alluringly Alpine Bavarian Allgäu region of Germany; however, it lies close to the four-land point, where Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria’s borders intersect, so it’s ideal for a Euro-hopping trip.
Planes
The closest international hub is Bodensee Airport in Friedrichshafen, just under an hour’s drive away; it has direct routes throughout Europe and North Africa, but these are quite limited. Zurich Airport is two hours away, but opens up the map with direct routes globally. Alternatively, Munich and Stuttgart in Germany, and Innsbruck in Austria are all well-connected and are a two- to three-hour drive.
Trains
Bregenz train station is a half-hour drive from the hotel, and has strong links with neighbouring countries; direct routes run to Munich, Zurich, Innsbruck and more. Lindau station is the same distance away by car.
Automobiles
We hope you like hairpin bends – actually, around these parts the scenery will have your heart racing more than the well-maintained roads; which is good, because you’ll need a car (or bike) to to really get involved with it. There’s free parking at the hotel and two charging points for electric cars.
Worth getting out of bed for
In both topography and attitude, there’s nothing flat about the Allgäu region. From Alpenloge’s windows you feel like you could reach out and prick your finger on a peak, but aside from monstrously proportioned mountains that provide ample opportunity for hiking, snowshoeing and climbing, plus various kinds of skiing in winter, there are deep Hansel-and-Gretel-y pine forests, Disney castles (no, really, Neuschwanstein was the inspiration for Disneyland’s centrepiece), and crystal-clear lakes. A 20-minute drive from the hotel is Lake Constance, where you can swim, sail and windsurf, and on its banks are the kind of villages portrayed on the fancier biscuit tins. You don’t need crampons to get a view from the top – Naturerlebnis Park’s Sky Walk is the easy option if you want peak panoramas; and there’s satisfying treks to be had through Wildrosenmoos and Hausbachklamm reserves – the latter has zipline swings too. Back at the hotel you can steam, sauna, take a massage, or nurse a hot spiced wine round the lounge’s fire (there’s a selection of drinks too). But if you want to actually do something, chef Mark hosts cooking classes for groups of up to four; your session might be themed around fish caught from Lake Constance, meat from local beef farms, or veggies from the back meadow. You can try your hand at archery too, or local herbalist can be called on to give guests a guided tour, and in summer barbecues are held on the grassy lawns.
Local restaurants
The hotel is very community-minded, and perhaps this is why their restaurant is closed on Thursdays and Sundays – because otherwise you’d be there seven nights a week. But, it opens up the opportunity to try the local cuisine. Bio Postwirt Scheffau down the road is very sweetly dressed, with heart cut-outs in chairs and a chalet feel. Food is all organic, and the menu is more traditional, with sausage salad, local cheese spätzle with fried onions, and pot roast with cabbage and dumplings. Plus, there are cheesecake pots for dessert. Cross over into Austria (about a 25-minute drive) for elegant and imaginative dining in a stylish redbrick space at Restaurant Mangold. Meals here might kick off with beef tartare with pickled chanterelles and mountain-cheese profiteroles, followed by venison with a vegetable risotto and chestnuts, and finish triumphantly with a buttery apple and cheese-curd crumble topped with sour cream. In Bregenz, dining gets a saucy French accent at Petrus Café Brasserie, an all-day diner serving up the likes of duck with kumquat, moules in white wine, coq in red wine, and a rich bouillabaise. And, if you want something with a Michelin glint in its eye, head to Schattbuch for multi-course menus of Campari-sloshed seabass, lobster with shiitake and finger lime, and deer with wild broccoli in a cranberry jus.
Local cafés
Charming 18th-century eatery Margit & Fehl has painted its doorframe red as an augur of luck, and – it so happens – slices of delightfully creamy cakes (and vegan picks), warming coffee, and some savouries chalked up on the board outside. In Lindau, Kunst Café is part antiques shop (browse the walls while you sip) and part eatery; they have their own coffee brand (Trieste 1892), and lunches consist of grilled paninis and flambéed tartlets, followed by a selection of cakes that are art, indeed.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this winsome welcoming lodge in the Alps of the western Allgäu and unpacked their bottle of secco and wedge of Bergkäse, a full account of their Heidi-high break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Alpenloge in Bavaria…
On seeing Alpenloge, in the Alpine Allgäu region of Bavaria, we can’t help but think of Christopher Walken insisting to the Blue Öyster Cult that they need ‘more cowbell’ in the famous Saturday Night Live skit; because you know what, we do need more cowbell in our lives. Well, in Alpenloge’s alternately grassy and snowy, herb-filled meadows, you’ll hear them clunking comfortingly, alongside sheep bleating and bells ringing out from the nearby village’s red, onion-shaped dome, all while taking in lungfuls of air so fresh you might get a contact high. Formerly a schoolhouse in the 1930s, the 'loge' – which has all the pointy-terracotta-roofed sweetness of a chalet – has been made into an eco-friendly home for those who live there and those who don’t by owners Anja and Michael. They’ll welcome you with a glass of locally made secco sparkling wine, give you the run of the lounge and various outdoor terraces where barbecues are held in summer, and offer spiced wine around the fire. Rooms face all four compass directions (most peek over the peaks), and are cosily dressed with warm woods, fluffy and fleecy furnishings, and botanical prints (some have fireplaces too); and the basement spa’s sauna and steam bath kickstart the post-ski and -hiking healing process, while the panoramas from the window-walled relaxation rooms round it off. Add a truly local feel (nearly everything is sourced from the region), and a chef who skews Wonka-esque with his incredible culinary creations, and Alpenloge is actually far more ring-a-ding-ding than plodding bovine bongs.
