Hotel & Cruise Blogger. Member of a Finnish Guild of Travel Journalists. Lux Life Travel Awards winner 2020.
Haltia Lake Lodge is a hotel located near Nuuksio National Park, next to the Haltia Nature Center, where nature is close in many ways. In Nuuksio, glamping means a set of five tents built in a mature forest. The tents have an insulated wooden floor and solid ends, on which a thick tent fabric is stretched using a wooden frame. There is no running water, but there is a freezing toilet and water for washing hands and teeth. The air heat pump heats (or cools down in the heat) the tent and the refrigerator cools the drinks. The glamping experience was very special. The hotel-room-like atmosphere combined with the sounds of nature twisted the brain at first. I stayed in the tent at the beginning of August in beautiful weather. But the tent would be at its most authentic in windy weather, when the hum of the surrounding mature forest and other forest sounds would fill the tent. A snowy forest in winter would also be special.
Folks Hotel Konepaja has been renovated into three office and canteen buildings that were used by VR. The oldest of the buildings dates back a hundred years, the newest from the 1980s. Stairways, red brick walls, wide window sills and partly very high room space create a special atmosphere. Folks Hotel Konepaja has the style and standard of a boutique hotel, the details are thought out and focused on. The luxury hostel feel is most apparent in the modern shared kitchen, the refrigerators in the rooms, and the microwave ovens and dishes in some of the room categories. You can really come to this hotel with your own grocery bag. The hotel also has a gym and a sauna department, where the specialty is a large steam sauna. The hotel has a total of 146 rooms. Standard rooms make sense for families, couples and solo travelers alike. The superior, loft and suite rooms are clearly more luxurious and in them the spirit of the old buildings is most clearly visible.
Clarion Hotel Mestari is located in the center of Helsinki, on the corner of Fredrikinkatu and Eerikinkatu. The building is the old building of the Master Builders, and this is where the hotel got its name and theme. Happily, several good hotels in old buildings have been renovated in Helsinki in recent years; the most successful, in my opinion, is the Grand Central Hotel at the train station and Folks Konepaja. Clarion Hotel Mestari's core consists of extensive event spaces, a Latin-themed restaurant in the center of the hotel, and about 200 hotel rooms of different sizes. Like the entire hotel, the rooms have been renovated with care but have not been clinically polished. The restaurant, corridors, and rooms are darker than the average Helsinki hotel. I recommend Clarion Hotel Mestari especially for couples. The hotel is not completely unobstructed in all parts; the old building has different heights and steps.