Amarillo is a centrally located fusio-Mexican restaurant and night club on Rotuaari in Oulu. Amarillo is a chain of restaurants around Finland, operated by the co-operative S-Group. Usually (and as in Oulu), they can be found at Sokos Hotels.

Amarillo has a wide variety of menu items from the both sides of the Tex-Mex border. Some portions have got influences from Lousiana and Missisippi cooking.

The food is okay, not superb but really worth the cost. They do not offer any specific lunch list, but you can order anything from the menu. Service is good and personal, sometimes a bit slow.

www.amarillo.fi, Kirkkokatu 15, Oulu, Finland, +358 8 312 3100

Hotelli Lasaretti is located a couple of kilometers off the centre of Oulu, in Lasaretinsaari island above the Oulu hydrodam. The island was owned by Finnish military forces and was closed for the public until end on 20th century.

The hotel has been carefully renovated to old red brick buildings. The rooms are located on a separate building next to the lobby. They are airy, clean and fresh, and riverside rooms have splendid view to the Oulu river. There are also salmon steps just next to the hotel, so you may see fishes jumping upstream.

The hotel has very good table and chairs for using laptop, and WLAN is available on the whole hotel. The breakfast, as usual in Finnish hotels, in excellent. The hotel is worth the price, but you may need to take cab to the centre and back. The walk goes through lush gardens, but you may get lost…

www.merikoski.fi/lasaretti_eng, Kasarmintie 13, Oulu, Finland, +358 8 884 8300

I upgraded Nomadig.com installation of WordPress from 1.5 to 1.5.1 yesterday night while watching Canada being beaten up by Czechs in the ice hockey world cup. The upgrade went very well and my Mac was not able to burn any marks to my knees even it got really heated up quite fast.

As I have changed WP code from here and there, I installed the new version of WP to a new directory and then grepped all my comments from the source code and patched WP 1.5.1. One of my patches was rendered useless by WP developers, but then I had to fix another bug… So the number of fixes remained the same.

The next step after patching was to make a backup of the current code to tackle possible severe regressions. I almost screwed my site up with tar in the process, but fortunately the friendly program did not understand my command line and did not even start properly…

The actual upgrade was a simple cp command that copied all new PHP files to the old journal directory. After copying I made a fast run through the site and fixed one bug that might have been created by the upgrade. As everything looked fine, I could focus on the game again. No goals during hacking.

Ravintola Pääkonttori (literally “Head Office”) is a top-notch Italian-Scandinavian style restaurant renovated in the old head office of SOK, the biggest Finnish retail corporation (a co-operative, to be exact). The building hosts also Radisson SAS Plaza Hotel.

The restaurant is huge and it has several different areas besides the main dining hall: lounge bar, cabinets, mezzanine level seating, fireplace room and yet another bar. Some of these areas are not available for normal dining, as they are reserved for private parties.

Both food and the service are good, and we didn’t have to wait for too long to get the portions. The food is gourmet, but you can still eat with your own money.

www.ravintolaopas.net/paakonttori/, Mikonkatu 23, Helsinki, Finland, +358 20 1234 700, paakonttori.ravintolat@radissonsas.com

Helsinki Market Square (Kauppatori in Finnish) is a tantalising mix of locals in coffee or buying berries, mushrooms, fish or bread from the merchants, and tourists purchasing souvenirs from a little bit tacky stalls. The food has market prices, but the souvenirs may be cheaper in Stockmann or in the shops on Esplanadi.

The square itself sits in a prime position in Helsinki, at the end of the Esplanadi park, near the Presidential Palace and Helsinki townhouse — just a stone throw away from both lutheran and orthodox cathedrals.

Market Square serves also as a dock for ships going to Suomenlinna fortress and sighseeing routes around Helsinki and Espoo archipelago.

Kauppatori, at the end of Esplanadi, Helsinki, Finland

Esplanadi Park is the most central park in Helsinki, located between the end of Mannerheimintie and the market square. The park is sort of a wide boulevard, as Pohjois-Esplanadi and Etelä-Esplanadi streets run on its sides.

There are a couple cafés / bars in Esplanadi. The biggest, Teatteri, is at the downtown end and the other, Kappeli, is near the sea. Both serve snacks, light lunches and drinks. Teatteri has a full-blown restaurant, too. There are also a couple of kiosk selling sodas and ice creams.

The park has several works of art from late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the foremost Finnish poets, Eino Leino, has a statue near Teatteri.

During summertime, the park has bands and other happenings on the stage opposite Kappeli.

Esplanadi Park, between Pohjois-Esplanadi and Etelä-Esplanadi, Helsinki, Finland

I have to go to Oulu once again in terms of business. I booked my flights yesterday from Blue1 and today tried to get a room. First, I tried Sokos Hotels — I’ve been in that hotel before and it was a good experience — but the website told me that there is no availability. I checked with the hotel, but they confirmed me that the website is working. Bummer!

Next try was Radisson SAS that looked like an excellent hotel from the pictures on their website. Alas, their web reservation system was broken and after getting a few times 500 Internal server error, I had to find the phone number to the hotel with Google (the Radisson SAS system was so broken that I couldn’t get the hotel front page). They were full, too.

The third try was Ramada, and they had free rooms. The price was quite steep compared to Arina last time (almost 100€ difference) and only smoking rooms were available. I decided to try other hotels. Cumulus hotel was on the same reservation engine, but they were full — this was a sort of a relief, as I’ve been a couple times in Cumulus and they suck (think of Holiday Inn).

Finally, I called to Hotelli Lasaretti and got a room with a good price. The only downside is that the hotel is in a middle of a park more than a kilometer from our office. I’ll probably get lost or then use taxi. Time will tell.

Previous time I got the hotel with excellent pricetag at the last minute, but maybe it was really a low-low season, and now we are in a middle season — this can’t be high season yet.

Marimekko is one of the modern Finnish design flagships. Their colourful clothes, bags and other accessories have a refreshing mix of retro and trendy feel.

There are several Marimekko stores in Helsinki, and the biggest of them is located in Kämp Galleria on Pohjois-Esplanadi. The store has two floors and a mezzanine level, The street level floor is filled with garments for ladies, the mezzanine has also ladies stuff and the basement contains most of the bags, linens and children clothing.

Marimekko bags are items with artistic folk in Finland, and they are really handy for the rest of us, too. The selection is wide, so everybody should find at least one good bag.

www.marimekko.fi, Pohjoisesplanadi 31, Helsinki, Finland, +358 9 686 0240, kamp@marimekko.fi