Alpengasthof Praxmar

"You will feel like home away from home" - this is what The Alpgasthof Praxmar promises on their Website. And this is what I felt like, when I spent a week here. The Alpgasthof Praxmar is a comfy mountain guest house (literally for “Alpgasthaus") tucked away at the end of the Sellrain Valley in the Tyrolian mountains at about 1700m. I spent here a week to undertake skitours with friends. I enjoyed the excellent and huge breakfast buffet, the evening menus (cooked in a family country house style) and the quiet nights in the cosy and clean rooms. Some skitours just start in Praxmar. Returning from our skitours we recovered in the sauna. I felt welcome by the family and well supported, in particular, when due to problems with my Achilles tendon, I substituted skitouring with visiting Innsbruck. I was given a useful map, hints about where to park the car (at “Hafen”, near exit Innsbruck West), where to eat (in the "Weisse Rössli") and what to see (such as the Hofkirche). And they organized a private tour with an experienced guide for me. When checking out previous comments in Tripadvisor, I noticed many "excellent", but also some "poor" ratings. May be the "poor" ratings were given by guests that expected the luxury of a four star hotel in a more posh ski resort with gourmet meals? This is not what guests find in Praxmar. The Alpgashtof is a “mountain guest house” with a family ambiance and with down-to-earth home-like and well made Austrian cooking including meat from the own farm. However, the Austrian style meals were never served without a rich sauce (that I often pushed to the side, not being used to that). What I really liked were the Austrian sweets such as Palatschinken or Kaiserschmarr’n, the Pumuckel Spaghetti with tomato sauce and the huge breakfast buffet. It is great that breakfast and dinner take place in smaller eating rooms – we sat in a room with three tables for six to eight persons each. Another reason to feel like home. For a mountain guest house, the Alpgashtof deserves the rating "excellent" in my opinion.