Hotel Veraneio Hampel: Veraneio Hampel
--->>>> EDIT February 2010: I'm sorry to report after so many years of going to Hotel Veraneio Hampel and enjoying this beautiful location... the situation has changed. This hotel is under new owners with no clue about customer service, so I can no longer recommend this hotel. It used to be great, what a shame, now the service is non-existant. One to avoid!
(my original tip from times past): We really love this hotel and return every year. The hotel uses two buildings: the old one and the new. The first was built around 1900, it’s three storey wooden building: 4 cosy rooms upstairs (2 facing the garden, 2 facing the trees), ground floor with dining and socializing rooms and basement with 2 game rooms (pool, table tennis, cards and board games). The newer building is from the fifties and has 12 large and comfortable rooms, recently renovated, with a small veranda facing the trees, which are mainly spectacular araucarias (araucaria angustifolia), a majestic coniferous tree native of southern Brazil and northern Argentina.
Breakfast is very nice, there is a buffet with local produce - and we also had dinner at the hotel, it was a delicious unpretentious meal, reasonable priced
Some beautiful short walks around the property lead to an artificial lake (suitable for swimming) and a tiny waterfall (really small, and it was almost dry during the driest January for many years).
This hotel was built in an area known today as “Região das Hortênsias” (Hydrangea Region) and you can see blue and white hydrangeas everywhere you look.
We drove to this hotel from Porto Alegre (110 km), but if travelling by bus I believe the only way to reach this hotel is by taking a taxi from the nearest bus station at São Francisco de Paula (distant 3.5 km from the hotel).
It’s a good area for bird watching and the hotel has information on local birds at their website. While there we saw many humming birds.
