Pint and burger: Holiday burger
I have a habit to enjoy some pint & burger at my last day of work before the summer break and this year wasn’t exception. I found a new burger joint, Ranch Club. I was somewhat surprised to see same old cafe that used to serve cheap sandwiches and beer to boat people at harbour now chanced to a lunch restaurant. Ok, it could have served luch before also, I’m not big on that kind of places. Couple overweight construction workers waddled in with happy faces, so I guess the size of servings would be quite big.
It seems to be that you can buy a boat here too.
I took a Cowboy Burger. Waiter warned us from seagulls, within 10 meters someone was refueling his boat, not exactly the best place to eat or is it.
Burgers came soon and first bite was full of surprise. Good. Very good. Lahti have so low quality burgers at the moment that this has to be the best in Lahti. A good job, I would say.
Nice burger, enough fries. Even seagulls left us alone.
Afterwards we went to Teerenranta, a Teerenpeli reastaurant and microbrewery’s restaurant boat at Lahti Ankkuri harbour. This is my favourite ”pub” in summertime. I usually go to Teerenpeli at winters. Ok, both places are serving average beer, some ”funny experiment beers”, homemade gin and whisky that are quite pricey, but you know what you are getting and you can always have local IPA from tap. That’s something that is not— foregone conclusion in Finland.
Lahti Ankkuri harbour is quite nice place.
Actually if you want to enjoy burger or pint in Lahti, there were the best places IMO. There is Hello American Diner, but beef patties are quite dry nowadays, Brygga serves different kind of beers, but is not open usually when I like to drink (before 4PM). Local people are binge drinking Finnish lager at many pubs that are maybe worth of visiting just to see local drinking habits, if you are a not a Finn. You’ll find your drinks and also mediocre burger— — at city center area— almost— every block.
There were the pints and burgers (I maybe do more exact story in future), but what about if you got interested and want to visit Lahti, Finland? Well, don’t. Just kidding, of course this town offers something for someone, if not everyone.
Lahti has a rough reputation as a very violent city, TV show ”Temptation Island Finland” named Lahti as ”Temptation Island capital” and reason was ”Lahti is a white trash city”. These are not necessarily true or at least the whole truth. First, Lahti is not the most violent city in Finland. At year 2015 Lahti was at place 55 (someone wonders that Finland doesn’t even have so many cities, well, that list counts counties as well) and that is the true that Lahti is a working class city, but you can found more white trash elsewhere. You can wear your trainers and track pants almost everywhere in Lahti and what wrong is that?
If you like big cities, Lahti is not for you, I don’t know if even Helsinki is. In other hand, if nature is your thing or maybe you don’t want to see an European city, but more like a Finnish town, then maybe Lahti is worth of visiting. You can easily do day trip from Helsinki, if you are not sure about staying here, with Z-train it will take about an hour, more expensive train could do that trip in 45 minutes or so and trains are going to Lahti and back at least one time per hour except night time.
The most important tourist attraction in Lahti must be the winter games. Ski jumping, cross country skiing etc. If you want to visit summertime, same woods are offering quite good opportunities to hiking and mountain biking, here are also a lake and you can rent a boat or perhaps you could find your way to some island or waterfront that have a sauna. With road bicycle you can visit nearby villages and most of the routes have separate bicycle/walking paths.
Lahti has an own traditional dish: Lihamuki (meat mug). Yes, it’s a mug full of kebab meat. Be sure to try it, you can find it from kebab restaurants or street grills, fancy restaurants don’t have this nice special treat. A fun fact: Lahti has even a college radio named after this wonderful dish, LiMu-Radio.
Well, there you had it. So, if you fancy a mug of meat while cross country skiing, wellcome to Lahti, maybe even if you don’t. It’s good to know that in Finnish scale Lahti is quite cheap town to live, so one could think that it’s that for tourists too (I’m not sure though). You’ll find infromation here— http://visitlahti.fi/en/
