messilÄ
Destination
Attractions
Sustainability
How to get here
Accommodation
Food
Impressions
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Destination
Messilä is an inviting winter sport resort in Lahti. It is located in Hollola, just 10 km from the city of Lahti and about 110 km from Helsinki. Messilä is the most popular ski resort in southern Finland, where there are plenty of fun activities all year round. There are different options to choose from. You can go downhill skiing, sledding, skiing, eating at restaurants or spend the night in the wonderful rental cabins or in a hotel room. These options are conveniently close to the slopes. There are 10 different slopes and one sledding hill.
Attractions
Several young people in Lahti and beyond will definitely say that Messilä is their favourite place to go in winter, especially with friends. Along with downhill skiing -if you want more action, Messilä offers snowmobile riding by Jump Up- service. There is also a possibility to rent a sauna for a short period of time.
If you haven’t sledded or done anything of the winter sports mentioned above, there are professionals to help you, so that you don’t have to worry about your skills. And if you wish to have more personal lessons for a specific sport, you can book a private teacher for a 45-min or a 90-min lesson.
You can also go on a snowmobile trip. It includes a one-hour safari with a guide. You must have a driving license and be over eighteen.
In summer
When the cold winter season comes to an end, Messilä continues to offer intriguing activities for people of all ages. Near the main campus of Messilä are located a golf course and a campsite near the lake Vesijärvi.
Messilä has a large golf area which is located just next to the Messilä’s downhill skiing slopes. If you want to go golfing, it costs around 60€ and includes a golf trolley. But if you want a golf cart, you can rent it for an extra fee.
The campsite has many motor home and tent sites. There is also an indoor kitchen, washing machines, grills and saunas which you can use when camping.
Sustainability
When it comes to sustainability, one of Messilä’s biggest challenges is electricity consumption. Since it is a ski resort, their success depends on the weather. Nowadays, because of the changes in climate, the winter season has shortened, and the average temperature has risen. This means that Messilä needs to lean more on artificial snow, which means more electricity consumption, along with operating lifts and heating cabins.
However, in Messilä, garbage recycling is on a very high level, and they encourage customers to do the same. At Messilä’s restaurants, they favor big packages, for instance, when ordering raw material and other goods, as well as recyclable packaging materials in order to produce less garbage.
Messilä pumps up all water for their snow cannons from lake Vesijärvi.
How to get here
The easiest and most eco-friendly ways to travel to Messilä are by bike or by bus. You can get to Messilä straight from Lahti city centre by a local bus number 1 from “Kauppatori” (Lahti Market Place). On foot it would take about 1,5-2 hours to get there from the centre of Lahti.
Messilä’s Ski Express coach service offers transportation from Helsinki to Messilä and back on demand.
Accommodation
It is also possible to spend a night at Messilä. Their accommodation options are near the slopes and the restaurants. There are old store rooms renovated into hotel rooms, cottages, log cottages and Ylöstalo, a house for up to 10 people). Also during the winter period, you can have breakfast at Manor restaurant, often included in the accommodation price.
At Messilä resort, people enjoy downhill skiing, the beautiful view to lake Vesijärvi, sledding down smaller slopes, relaxing in the cozy rental cabins or in hotel rooms and the exquisite cuisines at the restaurants.
Food
While enjoying the slopes you can rest in one of the four cafes: Cafe Laaso, Manor restaurant, Market restaurant and Messilä’s Bistro. You can buy yourself warm drinks, meals or sweets. At Cafe Laaso you can also buy ski passes for the lifts.
You can rent equipment at Messilä rental service. Rentable equipments are skis, boots, poles, snowboards, snow board shoes and a helmet. You can rent equipment in a package or separately. You can rent them for 3 hours, 6 hours, a day and for an extra day. The standard package costs 37 euros for a day (season 20-21).
There are many options for ski passes. For example, if you want a pass for one day, it costs 41 euros (season 20-21). The price also depends on where you buy the tickets: online or on the spot.
Impressions
Watch these cool Messilä live streams:
https://messila.fi/en/messilan-rinteet-2/rinnetiedot/rinnekamerat
http://62.165.140.138/view/index.shtml
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PIRUNPESä - Devil's Nest
Destination
Attractions
Sustainability
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Accommodation
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Destination
Pirunpesä (devil’s nest) is a gorge in a nature reserve located in Hollola, close to the city of Lahti, just 1 km from Messilä holiday and outdoor activity resort. It’s nearly 34 hectares in size. The gorge solidified from magma 2,000 million years ago, and you can still see marks from the waves that were present in the ice age. Pirunpesä has been a protected area since the 1950s.
People like to visit Pirunpesä because of its beautiful nature and scenery. You can see many types of different plants there, for example many different species of mosses. You can go for a hike and even camping there. There is a 5-kilometre long path called Tiirismaan kierros (= Tiirismaa route) around the area, and it is marked with red paint and wooden signs.
At Lahden Seudun Luonto (=Lahti’s Regions Nature) website https://www.lahdenseudunluonto.fi/pirunpesa/ you can find more information about Pirunpesä, in addition to some cool videos.
Attractions
At Pirunpesä you can make a campfire, but only at the places reserved specifically for that. You also have to take possible wildfire warnings into account, and of course the weather conditions. You can alternatively hangout with friends, relatives or family and much more… At Pirunpesä you are allowed to pick berries, mushrooms and such, as long as you don’t harm the environment purposefully. In the forest, you’ll see blueberries, cranberries, lots of mosses, and different types of trees. If you go to Pirunpesä, you should take your own snacks with you, because there isn´t any actual food service nearby. But if you would like to go eat in some warm place, you should go to Messilä´s own restaurant.
Lake Vesijärvi or a smaller lake Tiilijärvi are rather close to Pirunpesä: there you can go swimming for free. In addition, there are beautiful views and nice forest nearby and surrounding Pirunpesä. You can also take photos of Pirunpesä. Some of the animals that you can see at Pirunpesä area include different types of woodpeckers, nightjars, owls, wrynecks, and grouses.
Sustainability
Pirunpesä has been a protected area of nature since the 1950s. It ensures and protects the biodiversity of nature and it helps to keep our ecosystem in a natural balance, which is extremely important for humanity because it provides many natural services for everyone.
Pirunpesä can be considered as a sustainable attraction for tourists, because it doesn’t really play a negative part in climate change or cause any emissions, unlike for example shopping. Instead, it’s effect on nature and climate is positive: it can be considered a carbon sink, since its trees and vegetation hold more carbon in than release it.
Even though Pirunpesä is not valuable in money per se, it is a priceless, valuable and quite underappreciated part of nature, which provides great refreshing properties for the mind and body.
How to get here
You can get to Pirunpesä on foot, by bus or by car. Biking there is also an option. You can get there easily by using a navigator, app, or google maps, for example. By bus you have to use the bus number 1M, which leaves from Lahti Travel center or the Market square. After the bus ride, you need to walk, or bike, about 1 km to get to the gorge itself.
Caption: The fastest route is 9,8 km long and takes 16 minutes by car.
Accommodation
You can camp in the woods, or you can stay at a campsite nearby at Messilä holiday and outdoor activity resort. You can rent a cottage, or you can camp in a campervan of your own, or alternatively borrow or rent one, or share it with a friend or a family member. Animals are allowed in the cottages, so you are free to bring your pets along. The campsite is busy in summer, and there’s a restaurant to eat in.
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Lahti Sports Centre
Destination
Attractions
Sustainability
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Accommodation
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Destination
Lahti Sports Centre is a major sports centre in Lahti. There are many different things you can do. For example, during summer you can go swimming, walk around the forest or visit the Ski jump tower observation deck, and during winter you can go skiing. There are about 180 kilometers of cross-country ski tracks in Lahti. The sports centre is internationally known for its ski games called Lahti Ski Games or Salpausselkä Ski Games.
Lahti Ski Games is an annual international competition for Nordic winter sports held at the turn of February-March. The event lasts for three days and includes cross-country skiing, ski jumping and combined sports. All competitions have been part of the World Cup in recent years. During its more than 90-year history, the fireworks seen on Saturday night have become one of the highlights of the Games.
Attractions
- There’s a swimming pool at the bottom of the downhill of the biggest ski jumping tower. The 50-meter-long pool is open from May to August for everyone for a reasonable price. There’s also a gym and showers and saunas which are included in the ticket price.
- There is also a stadium with tracks and a sport field and a football field in the Sports Centre.
- There is also an indoor sports and conference centre right next to the Sports Centre, where different sports from athletics to floorball can be practiced all year round, as well as several exhibitions from different lines of businesses take place.
- You can visit the highest ski jumping tower during summer for a small price.
- You can also visit Lahti Ski Museum, which displays the diverse history of winter sports culture in Finland.
- During summer you can go mountain biking and walk on some tracks. You may also go orienteering.
- During winter you can go skiing or you could go on walks and admire the snowy forest.
- There are hiking and cycling paths that go from the Sports Centre to Messilä winter sports centre and to Tiirismaa forests.
Sustainability
The sports centre co-works with a local energy company called Lahti Energia. Their energy is fully renewable, so using it is a sustainable act. The sports centre also tries to recycle as much as they can. Just going to the sports centre is an environmentally friendly thing, because the area is mostly nature and does not harm it or waste natural resources.
How to get here
You can easily walk to the sports centre because it is close to downtown Lahti, so it only takes about 10-15 minutes to walk there from the Market square. A few buses go by the Sports Centre. Soon you can also cycle there with a city bike, since Lahti is considering to start to rent city bikes.
Accommodation
If you want to stay in a hotel near the Sports Centre, you can stay at Solo Sokos Hotel Lahden Seurahuone or at Capitano apartments.
Food
There is a restaurant right next to the ski jumping towers called Voitto, which means victory. The restaurant offers many kinds of traditional Finnish and Northern European foods for example fish, mushrooms and different soups.
Impressions
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