Flair-Hotel in Austria

My wife and I spent three glorious days in Velden-Auen, Austria, June 29-July 2, 2008. We stayed at the Flair-Hotel (Süduferstrasse/Quellenweg 97, A-9220 Velden-Auen, Austria; phone +43 [0] 42 74 25 34 0,

www.flairhotel.com), a 5-minute drive from the center of Velden. The hotel is right on the lake and has an indoor heated pool.

We paid €118 (about $180 in June ’08) for two people for a spacious room with a balcony facing the lake. The included breakfast was a full buffet.

We had dinner at the hotel one night for €18 per person ($28). It included a salad bar, melon, choice of entrée and dessert. This was one of our best meals in the three weeks we spent in Germany and Austria.

The owners are a young couple and run the hotel themselves. The wife does most of the cooking and baking. She made pastry, cake and bread daily. They both speak English and could not do enough for us. We were the only Americans staying there at the time.

They gave us the use of a Kartan card, entitling us to free admission to many sites and museums, including Minimundus, which is a miniature villiage of major sights in various countries, such as the Great Wall of China, the White House, the Statue of Liberty and so on.

We visited the quaint towns of Klagenfurt and Villach as well as Hochosterwitz Castle, perched high on top of a mountain.

Velden is about a 4-hour drive from Vienna and two hours from Salzburg. Northern Italy and Slovenia each are about a one-hour drive away.

GERALD BITMAN

Lake Worth, FL