Sokos Hotel Jyväshovi is a quality hotel in middle of Jyväskylä. The entrance is to Kauppakatu, the main shopping street, and bars, cafes and night clubs are just around the corner. The hotel itself is like any other Finnish hotel: clean, quiet and little dull. Rooms are quite large and filled with all required amenities. The hotel has bar, restaurant and a night club. The breakfast is included in the price and it boasts more than 30 different varieties to select from.

Try to get a room with sauna. The cost is mere 20e per night, but you can relax in the sauna after a hard day or get energy to tackle the challenges of a new day.

Price for double room: €80-100.

www.sokoshotels.fi, Kauppakatu 35, 40100 Jyväskylä, +358 20 1234 641, sales.jyvaskyla@sokoshotels.fi.

I have started to add reviews as promised a week ago. The reviews page is still under construction, I’m having big big fights with WordPress currently. The dust hopefully settles before we leave to Iceland and States.

Ranskalaiset Korot is most probably the best restaurant in Jyväskylä. It is located in small boutique hotel Yöpuu, and shares the menu with restaurant Pöllövaari.

The restaurant is not big, less than ten tables and one cabinet. The style could be described as Finnish gourmet with a little French twist. The portions are huge, but they still taste good. We have room for dessert after having appetizers and main course. The service is attentive and personal, and not too pushy.

Appetizers €6-12, main courses €10-25, desserts €8-10.

www.hotelliyopuu.fi, Yliopistonkatu 23, 40100 Jyväskylä, +358 14 333 900.

I have once again found myself playing with WordPress. This time I added support for showing the currently selected category at the top right corner of the content area. Click any categories on the menu and see the results by yourself.

If you are a regular visitor, please update your CSS file by pressing CTRL+F5 (or the required key combination to force reloading all files).

In the same process I also added links to previous and next post into single post pages.

Once again, both these changes required some digging in WP. The next post wouldn’t include > sign inside the link, so I changed the code. Bad solution, but seemingly the only one. The current category was easier, I accidentally spotted proper undocumented function for the job: get_the_category_by_ID(). So I simply added the following code to index.php:

if(isset($cat)) {
  echo get_the_category_by_ID($cat);
}

And presto, we have the current category! Add your own HTML code around the function for more formatting.

I’m having one h*ll of a hectic week… I’m currently arranging the last details of our trip to Iceland and the States, and simultaneously joggling with three websites that all should be ready before the take-off. I’ll have one fashion shoot (private, so no pics here, sorry), sushi dinner (I’m the cook), and one wedding (not mine, though) during the next one and half weeks.

I’ll try to get my act together during the weekend for the review part, but it seems that it’s better not to promise anything.

I have written a few reviews to virtualtourist.com, and I’m going to share them with you in the near future.

I’m planning to put the reviews to the blog and add some additional metadata fields for showing these tips separately in the Travel Tips section. This takes some time as I have to code an PHP page that digs this information from WP database. The job is not huge, but I’m currently very busy with the next trip and other things… Hopefully I can implement this before taking off…

I’m back from holidays. It’s amazing how much backlog you gain in a single week… I’m fearing the worst for the two weeks holiday.

I’ll sort my things out first and then continue with the site. Stay tuned.

Karhunkierros (bear circle) is about 70 kilometers long trekking trail in Kuusamo, northeastern Finland. Pieni Karhunkierros (small bear circle) is a circular trail for one day trekking (12 km) in the middle of Karhunkierros. The smaller trail contains several points of interest, such as streams, a waterfall and breath taking views.

The trail starts at Juuma, 35 kilometers up north from Kuusamo, and guides the trekkers through varying landscapes: from arid sandy pine hills to swamp ponds with blossoming waterlilies.

  

The trail is not the easiest one. Some parts of it have wooden stairs and paths, but most of it is still in the natural shape: dirt paths, tree roots and occasional rocks. Have good hiking shoes or sandals, some water and snacks. There is a small cafe at the beginning of the trail, but otherwise there are no commercial services. For food, you may pick your own berries, catch a fish or two and roast sausages with fire in the designated areas — wood provided by courtesy of Finnish government.