Blog Archive: December 2015
Restaurant Tsiskvili in Tskneti
| Restaurant reviews | 32 seen
It was a mid day of working day at the start of December when I came up with spontaneous idea - lets leave our work behind and let's go out. I was eager to photography a daylight photography for my 365 photo project. We decided to use public bus instead of using a taxi to get to the Freedom Square in Tbilisi center. So we were standing at bus stop and couldn't figure out which bus actually goes to Freedom Square. I proposed, hey let's take bus #34 heading to Tskenti, which already approached our bus stop.
And so instead of Freedom Square we were heading to Tskenti. Tskenti is very lovely suburb close to Tbilisi, I have been there several times, either during some hiking activities or playing a bowling at Kopola bowling center.
And here we were - wandering around Tskneti. Shortly we found an interesting facade of a place that looked from scenes from Mexico.
Tsisiskvili restaurant in Tskneti
Bird cage with a lot of apartments in restaurants territory
Winter terrace in Tsiskvili restaurant
Thus it was at the start of December we visited this place it was already decorated in best Christmas…
Tex-Mex Klondaika Restaurant in Liepāja
| Restaurant reviews | 23 seen
Tex-Mex Klondaika in Liepāja is among one of my favorite Liepāja restaurants. I can't say I'm visiting this seaside town too often, but once I'm here I'm looking for this brand.
Located on lovely Stendera street in almost Liepāja city center, this restaurant has a lot to offer - starting traditional Tex-Mex style cuisine ending traditional Latvian cold soup (made from beets).
Menu at Tex-Mex Klondaika restaurant
Refreshing water with mint drink
Traditional Latvian Cold soup
Paella at Klondaika Tex-Mex
Sorry for the bad image here. Frankly speaking I first tried a traditional paella in Catalonia, Spain back in the 2014, the one prepared here in Liepāja was good as the Catalonian.
Empanada or something
Dessert with strawberries
Outdoor Patio at Tex-Mex Liepāja
The Bottom LineTex-Mex Klondaika restaurant in Liepāja is a must have place. They offer a really good menu with both Tex-Mex and traditional Latvian cuisine. Prices are pretty average.For above seen food we paid about EUR 30.
Visit www.texmex…
Car Service in Kazdanga
| Professional services | 13 seen
If you are having troubles with engine, need to change a tire or just looking to replace oil and you are stuck in Kazdanga area (Latvia) there is one car service I can recommend. Since I believe it's the one and only one in Kazdanga, let's name it - Kazdanga car service.
At this service we fixed a leaky muffler and straightened a dent on car's surface for about EUR 50
Car service in Kazdanga
Since this service is located in rural Latvia they mainly specializes on repairing tractor machinery and agricultural vehicles.
Repairing hydraulics
Agricultural machinery
Tractor
Oils and other
How to Capture and Post-Process Professional HDR Photos Using HDR Efex PRO
| Digital Photography School | 19 seen
In today's digital photography school tutorial I will show how you can take and make professional looking images using technology which is called HDR photography.
In fact before teaching you how to take and process a HDR images please take a note - I have been doing HDR photography less for one month. My findings so far are - like HDR is the best thing (I know as time will go I will probably change my mind and will go back to the routes, who knows maybe I will find a B&W the next BIG thing?!). I'm not a professional photographer, just a regular dude with a DLSR camera eager to learn some new things. I'm more than glad sharing my findings with you, my dear reader.
For this Tutorial I'm using:
- Adobe Lightroom
- HDR Efex PRO
- Canon 1200D DSLR camera
- Sturdy tripod
Final HDR image created with HDR Efex PRO and fine tuned in Adobe Lightroom
I submitted the above image as day 63/365 entry image on my Flickr page. I gave it a name - "It is still Autumn", taken on November 26, 2015 in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia
Now let me show how you can take and create similar…
Dzveli (Old) Shuamta Monastery
| Churches and Monasteries | 56 seen
If you are traveling to region of Kakheti and your road is leading through Telavi town, there are few interesting tourist sites to visit and one of them is a very old monastery complex called Dzveli Shuamta.
For the first time I visited this site together vith my mom in the middle of October 2015. It was a rainy and foggy day so not very spectacular images this time, anyway Dzveli Shuamta still has one of the oldest Christian churches of Georgia – the triple-nave basilica that dates back to the 5th century. Two other cross-domed churches were built in the 7th century. The walls of these churches still have fragments of frescos and inscriptions made in the old Georgian Asomtavruli alphabet. The monastery is situated in a hollow between forest-covered mountains so that it has natural protection from three sides. The fourth side used to be fortified by a thick wall. A tradition has it St. King Tamar once spent 40 days fasting in solitude on Shuamta hill. Source: Kakheti.travel
Dzveli Shuamta monastery complex near Telavi
Clay pots for storing wine
I don't know for sure the reason why those clay pots…
November 2015 Blog Traffic and Income Report 54,446 Users / $947.05
| Blogging | 8 seen
Welcome to the #23 traffic and income report covering blog traffic and earnings/expenses for November 2015. #23 means just one - one more month and it will be already two years since I have opted into thing called - making money from blogging. Two years are a lot of time, it's has been a long journey, but... I still feel it is day 2 or day 3.
I was doing separate reviews both for traffic and income until September, when I realized - how time consuming it is to provide 2 similar articles on related topic. Traffic and Income for a website goes hand to hand. You might wonder what stimulates me publish my traffic and revealing earnings for the past 23 months already? The reason for publishing such reports and revealing secrets beyond the scenes are simple - Transparency matters. I hope my success or failures can give some ideas to you as well.
About Blog Traffic in November 2015Past November was just brilliant - for the very first time it cracked 50K unique users milestone and totaled in 54,446 unique users. Compared to October it is 36.36% traffic growth.
Blog Traffic November…
How to Make Homemade Dumplings from Scratch
| Food blogger | 7 seen
In today's food blogger series I will demonstrate how to make homemade dumplings from scratch. Well, almost from scratch, there are a few handy tools that might be very useful preparing this delicious food.
I love dumplings, in most cases dumplings is a cost effective solution when you are in hurry and really hungry. It hasn't been rare for me to visit local groceries shop at 2AM just to buy a pack of frozen dumplings. Today I will show how you can prepare dumplings at home. It's a really simple and doesn't take a lot of time or a lot of effort.
Ingredients for dumpling dough.
- 1 kg of flour
- 600 ml water
- 100 grams of butter
- 1 tsp (with top) salt
Rest the dough for 30 minutes :
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Total cooking time: 40 minutes
I took this dough recipe from a Russian language culinary blog: Заварное тесто для вареников и пельменей
Let's start cooking:
Tumanishvili Theater Cafe in Tbilisi
| Restaurant reviews | 12 seen
Some people visits theater to watch spectacles, some people visits to theater to enjoy a cup of coffee at theaters' buffet. That's exactly what happened to us in late November Sunday afternoon. After wandering around David Aghmeneshabeli avenue we headed here to enjoy cup of latte and try some sweets.
Entrance at Tumanishvili theater
You probably have noticed this lovely sculpture if wandered in this neighborhood - now you now - there is a lovely cafe inside and of course the Tumanishvili theater
Artistic interior
There are few elements I really like here and would like to implement something from above scene in our rural house. The round dinning table is a must have.
Wide selection of alcoholic beverages
Glass of good brandy / cognac perhaps is a good idea after or before spectacle. Although I prefer coffee and cola.
Posters and paintings
The bottom lineTumanashvili's cafe seems a nice place where to enjoy a cup of coffee or try some sweets. Prices are pretty well above average in city. For two lattes, bottle of Coca Cola and a…
Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi
| Churches and Monasteries | 106 seen
You have probably noticed Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi if wandered around Abanotubani district - it's the one you can see up in the hill left from Narikala. The idea to visit this site arrived for me when some of the Georgia Expat Photographer club members posted a picture of this church.
I believe you can climb up here and have a lovely and a very spectacular hiking trip doing that, but for this time we opted for a more convenient way - a taxi. We took a regular street taxi and he took us up here, agreed to wait for 30 minutes while I will take photography here, and the took us back to the city for 20 Lari.
And this is actually the way I suggest to you for getting here if you aren't familiar with area.
Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi
Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi
In the background you can see Tbilisi TV tower (on the top left) and almost all city of Tbilisi.
Jesus Christ on the cross
Altar inside church
As I learned later this church has been built just recently (2012), some construction…
Painting Floor - Final Touch For Maximum Effect (Second Paint Layer)
| Home Remodeling | 1 seen
Right, we have arrived to the second post in my painting floor adventures from home remodeling series. Today I will show you how after adding second paint layer to our rural house's paint we achieved the maximum effect.
Paint work was performed at the start of July, 2015
Make sure you read other posts in our adventurous efforts of remodeling an old country house.
Floor ready for second layer of paint
Read more how I prepared this floor and applied base layer of paint here:
Floor waiting for a new layer of paint
As you can see in the background - it is a kitchen starting to get already a decent look
Applying second layer of paint
Wow,that's a dramatic makeover
Painted floor
Looks much better. Now our new temporary bedroom is almost ready, it's time to put in some furniture, finish kitchen works and start thinking of changing a leaky roof.
Wanderings In The Tbilisi Old Town (HDR Efex Pro)
| Digital Photography School | 16 seen
It was day 62 from my 365 photo challenge project and I felt I'm out of good photography locations. For couple of the last days I have been doing nice landscape photography in close to me locations, and it seemed that I'm out of options. I asked a friend (photographer) and asked could he give me some advice. He advised me to make a list with items to photograph, like birds, macro's e.t.c.
Still I felt I need to continue improving my landscape photography. Then another person asked have I tried HDR Effect PRO (For HDR photography I have been using just Photomatix) - my answer was no.
And here did came the inspiration - I decided to head to the lovely Abanatobuani district in Tbilisi Old town and make some cool looking HDR's with public bath houses and hopefully some sun in the background.
I downloaded trial version of HDR Effect pro, took a tripod, fully charged battery and my Canon DSLR camera. Latter when doing post processing I was impressed of dramatic effect HDR Effect Pro created:
Abanotubani district in Tbilisi
That's a nice looking HDR actually. Make sure you are exposing property when doing bracketing. I did a…
Sachebureke Abanotubanshi (Cheburek Cafe on Abanotubani)
| Restaurant reviews | 53 seen
The other day we were just wandering around Tbilisi sulphur bath (Abanotubani) district doing some cool photography of probably most popular tourist spot in Tbilisi - Abanotubani district. During our wanderings we noticed small doors with title - Cheburek Cafe and decided to return to this place once photography session will be ended.
Cheburek Cafe is located on Grishashvili street 8, Tbilisi
Those of you who don't know what a Cheburek is, here is a good explanation from Wikipedia - Chiburekki is a deep-fried turnover with a filling of ground or minced meat and onions. It is made with a single round piece of dough folded over the filling in a half-moon shape. A national dish of the Crimean Tatars and traditional for the Caucasian and Turkic peoples, it is also popular as snack and street food throughout Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Russia,Ukraine, as well as with the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey and Romania.
Cheburek is one of my favorite street foods and I was interested to learn more what kind of chebureki they serve at this place - for surprise of me -…
Fresh Vegetable Market Near Gori Highway
| Shopping Venues | 8 seen
I once had a friend visiting me from Canada, he was pretty much obsessed with eco friendly foods, I took him to the local Tbilisi Dezerter bazaar and told - hey look there are plenty of eco foods here. He took some carrot from local salesman and answered me - this probably is natural, but it's not eco!
Believe me or not - but my friend was right, I understood that immediately. If you just like my friend are into eco thing - you wont probably find eco friendly food near Gori Highway (connecting Tbilisi with Batumi) some 60 km from nations capital. On the other hand if natural is OK then you can buy fresh vegetables here for sure.
In fact this is what we actually did after returning from a day trip from Borjomi - we bought a box with tomatoes (about 10kg) to latter prepare tomatoes in jelly (Check out my food blogger series not to miss an update on that)
Tomatoes for sale near Gori highway in Republic of Georgia
Negotiating a deal with local farmers
The thing I love in Georgia - you can always bargain about the price, so we bought a box of tomatoes for about 10 lari, instead of 17 lari. Depending how good…
Borjomi Cafe 1+2
| Restaurant reviews | 12 seen
If you are looking for a decent cafeteria in Borjomi I can recommend one - Borjomi Cafe 1+2 located close to the entrance of Borjomi park. I paid a visit here and tried different dishes in the middle of September 2015.
Borjomi cafe 1+2
This cafe is located just next to the entrance in Borjomi Park.
Borjomi cafe 1+2
Lovely interior at Cafe 1+2 in Borjomi
Khachapuri and Salads
The bottom lineAlthough the prices here are about the average, taking into account it's good location and good service this is a place I can recomend once in Borjomi