Blog Archive: April 2017
Martkopi monastery
| Churches and Monasteries | 25 seen
Martkopi monastery complex is located some 30km from Tbilisi, Georgia. This place is best reached by car, but some could get here by hiking too, see: Hiking Route in Georgia - Norio Village - Martkopi Monastery
We first discovered it the end of February 2017 with one goal - to make stunning photography, as I've seen some really nice shots from this place, the truth turned out to be a little bit complicated, it took us about 5km hiking (each way) from Norio village, and once on site, I did find it hard to make that stunning photography. But here is what I think could work - there is another tower atop of Martkopi monastery, take that extra mile and you could produce nice aerial photography or use a drone.
Update: We returned here again in 2020 and this I was equipped with a DJI Mavic mini drone, and I managed to take some cool photography and video
During our latest trip to the monastery, we met priest Dato, with whom we are now friends on Facebook. We have been told that the place shelters about 100 people, disabled persons, and homeless people. Now, that's the true spirit of a church.
Martkopi monastery…
The Chronicle of Georgia, Monument Near Tbilisi Sea
| Tourism objects | 377 seen
The Chronicle of Georgia, also called History Memorial of Georgia is one of the hidden gems of Tbilisi.
Not at all a popular tourist spot, but definitely one of the impressive sites I have discovered lately. Located near the Tbilisi sea (it's a water reservoir actually) this place not only tells history of Georgia, but gives really spectacular views to surrounding vicinity. And impresses of it's size.
On a lovely Sunday's afternoon I packed my camera and tripod, ordered a taxi using Taxify app and asked to take me to this place and back (with waiting time for about 30 minutes). I paid 20 GEL, and by now I can say, made one of the best day trips in Georgia during my almost 6 years presence here. See: All About Georgia
If you feel indie travel just like me, take you options get there using taxi, marshrutka or maybe walking, or see how can I save you time and money by helping to plan your itinerary to Georgia, see organized tours in Georgia.
The Chronicle of Georgia
Now I would love to put this place in one shelf together with Sameba cathedral, Yerevan cascade and Garni Temple in Armenia. Really impressive sites…
Norio Village
| Railway / Bus / Ferry | 30 seen
Norio village is located in Gardabani district some 50 km from Gardabani and 25 km from nations capital Tbilisi.
My travels took me to Norio village at the end of February 2017, when we decided to make a lovely hiking trip to Martkopi monastery, we decided to travel here by public transport, in our case it was a marshrutka service leaving from Tbilisi (Samgori metro station).
Marshrutka final stop at Norio village in Georgia
Ride is marshrutka cost 1.5 GEL (as of February 2017) and took no longer than 30 minutes.
Marshrutka is a fun and very cheap way to explore Georgia, in past I've done a lot marshurtka trips across the country, though lately I prefer car private transfers
Concrete blocks in Norio village
Our route (about 5km) to Martkopi monastery started here.
I believe there is something interesting to see in Norio village itself, though in this case I'm listing it as public transport end stop. If you love indie travel and have decided to get to Martkopi monastery on your own, Norio village is a good reference point in fact.
Norio
Restaurant at Best Western's Tbilisi Art Hotel
| Restaurant reviews | 9 seen
This article is about restaurants review at Best Western's Tbilisi Art hotel located on Apakidze street 11 (behind the sports palace)
We visited this place on a Valentine's day 2017, ordered some basics, like Caesars salad, meal from fish and a dessert, also we ordered some glass of pink wine. Yeah, the basic stuff when taking your girl out.
Salmon with risotto
Now, I wouldn't call this something special, let's say it was decent, not gourmet but decent.
Lounge at Best Western's Tbilisi Art hotel
Chocolate fondue
Could be better, but still decent.
Hee Korean BBQ Grill in Chelsea, New York Review
| Restaurant reviews | 14 seen
Our latest trip to the United States was accompanied a lot by visiting local Asian cuisines, a Japanese Sushi place in Financial district (Zen Ramen and Sushi House, New York City) or Chinese noodle house in Philadelphia (Spice C - Hand Drawn Noodles in Philadelphia). Now it was time for Korean cuisine.
Hee Korean BBQ Grill is located on the corner of 6th Avenue and 27th street, which was just a few blocks away from our hotel room and INNSIDE NoMad hotel.
Frankly speaking, I do believe this was the first time for me visiting a Korean restaurant, and my first impressions were really good - unfortunetly I don't remember much from the names of the dishes we ordered, but they were great.
Menu at Hee BBQ Grill
As you can see prices are pretty affordable, and though I'm not an expert in Korean cuisine it was easy get to the point, by choosing among beef, shrimp, chicken or salmon base dish. I optet for some Beef Teriyaki which was just excellent
Beef Teriyaki
Served with grilled vegetables and rice. .
How To Order Goodies From US to Georgia - Usa2Georgia.com
| Living in Georgia | 102 seen
For those of you looking to ship goodies, like electronics, clothing, perfume e.t.c. from online stores located in the United States to Georgia, there is a simple, easy and affordable service - usa2georgia.com
I've been using usa2georgia.com for years, ordering items like hinges for my laptop (see: New hinges added to my HP Compaq 6510b), a laptop, equipment for DSLR camera, kitchen tools, even some food, clothing, perfume and more.
There is a small catch still, basically all of the items received in the US before been shipped to Georgia must be declared for customs, for items which price is more than GEL 300 a custom tax must be paid. Items worth less than 300 GEL are exempt from tax.
I always try to order some small items under $100 to avoid dealing with customs, as it might get really painful - you must go to Revenue Service to get some special tax payer code and taxes you are paying at the end are really not worth all of this process.
In fact lately things in Georgia have developed pretty good, and there is little you cannot buy here. Back in 2012, 2013 and even 2014 it was tougher with product supply, and then I…
INNSIDE New York NoMad Hotel Review
| Hotel reviews | 31 seen
From the footsteps of mount Kazbegi in Rooms Hotel (Georgia) to the footsteps of the Empire State Building in New York city - that's how I could describe in short our hotel choice during the holiday season of 2016/2017
We booked Hotel Innside by Melia in New York city after our return from Philadelphia, for a 4 day sat and paid about USD 600.
This sophisticated hotel in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan features on-site luxury dining and contemporary accommodations. Madison Square Garden, Penn Station and the Empire State building are within 20 minutes' walk of INNSIDE New York NoMad.
Queen size bed
Though we booked a king size bed, we got a smaller queen size bed, us our room was on the 17th floor the nice view towards empire state building, especially in night - fully compensate this minor issue.
Floor-to-ceiling windows and contemporary decor are featured in every guestroom at the INNSIDE New York. A flat-screen TV, Bluetooth connectivity panel, Nespresso coffee machine, a complimentary refreshment centre including water, soda and juice, rainfall shower heads and complimentary WiFi are standard in each room as well…
Speed Up Drupal site by 76% Using Image Lazyloader
| Drupal Development | 9 seen
In this article you will learn how I managed to increase load times for a Drupal powered site (the one you are currently reading) by more than 76%.
Now the following tip will apply for Drupal sites heavily loaded with images. My website, which is now more than 3 years old, features about 80% of photo stories, over the time, I have tried to limit my picture articles to 3 or less images, posting online the best of my work, but yes, there are articles with even 136 pictures, see Keukenhof tulips gardens in the Netherlands.
For each of the posts I'm using a head photo, done by using image fields from Drupal core, to make stories more Open Graph friendly. See: How to add Open Graph protocol for your Drupal site.
Now, I have tried many image optimization solutions, starting serving thumbnails ending compressing images in Adobe Lightroom, that have helped to speed up load times a lot, well a 16mb image uncompressed in a post and then multiply it to at least 3 - 16x3 = 48 MB for a post with just 3 images. I compress my images specially for blog to about 100-200kb each, that helps a lot.
At one time I noticed…
Spice C - Hand Drawn Noodles in Philadelphia
| Restaurant reviews | 14 seen
I first discovered Spice C noodle house in Philadelphia back in 2013, and mentioned it on my article about streets of Philadelphia.
Now about 3 years later, re-discovered this place again, after arrived to Philly from NYC and stayed at a lovely Chinatown hotel - Sleep Inn, it turned out that Spice C Noodle House is just about a block away from our hotel.
Spice C Noodle house in Philadelphia
One of the things visitors will enjoy at this place, you can actually see how your noodles are prepared
Hand drawn noodles
It's allowed to photograph inside, but not allowed to make a video.
Shrimp noodle soup at Spice C
Mmm, yummy
Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive Review
| Gadget Reviews | 64 seen
I bought Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive at the Best Buy store in Manhattan, New York City at the start of 2017 for about USD 69.
Now I could probably get a better price if opted to ship it online from Amazon store, see: Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive with Mobile Device Backup USB 3.0, Black (STDR1000100)
Back at the end of 2015, I bought a brand new Asus laptop with 500GB internal disk storage, the main goal for this laptop was to post-process photos taken by my Canon EOS Rebel T5 DSLR camera, after switching from JPEG to the RAW format, laptop started to run out of memory in about a year. To free up some space, I accidentally deleted some important pictures, which luckily I was able to restore. See: How To Recover Permanently Deleted Files (Canon CR2, JPG and more) on Windows
It was just the time to have a reliable backup for photos and videos. And here comes in Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive
Seagate 1TB Portable External Hard Disk
It comes with a 2-year limited warranty…
How To Shoot Indoor Photograpy
| Digital Photography School | 4 seen
Indoor photography covers a huge range of situations – from kids’ birthdays to high-end interior shootings. Basically, everything that is shot indoors.
Assuming that you don’t own studio lighting gear, all you’re left with is a light that’s already in your space. Because of that, indoor photography is often not-so-easy to shoot. Why? Because most of the time, the light in indoor spaces is poor and you need to learn to set your camera for low light situations.
Here, we’ll focus on some basic principles to follow while shooting indoors.
Problems disappear if there is a plenty of natural light
Manual Mode: Try to Avoid Built-In FlashThe indoor photography is a real test on how much do you understand your camera and settings that come with it. When you shoot indoors, manual mode is a must. Otherwise, in low light situations typical for indoors, on automatic mode, your camera will fire a built-in flash pretty much always. In such situations, you should avoid the built-in flash because it gives an unnatural, flat light that makes your subjects look unflattering.
Make the most out of the…
How I Lost 4.4 Pounds In 5 days In The Gym
| Health & Wellness | 17 seen
With this article I'm starting new blog series on blog - fitness, my first article, kind of warm up article for beginners,will cover details on how I lost my first 4.4 lbs (2 kg) in the gym after first five days of training.
For a prelude, I have been overweight for years, not obese, just overweight. My body weight have been in the range 210 - 242 lbs (95-110kg) for the past 10 years. My ideal body weight as I believe should be under 200 (90kg).
I live medium healthy lifestyle, with the biggest treat to health being smoking, which I want to get rid in the foreseen future. Though I eat pretty healthy and live medium active lifestyle including cycling and hiking in my weekly routine. See: Outdoor activities
Now, loosing body weight might be a tricky thing, I'm not into some diets, trying to starve my body in order to loose weight.
It was bout 3 years ago, I started to think more about my health, and almost enrolled to the gym - see: Aspria -Fitness club in Tbilisi
Unfortunately I didn't enrolled back at that time, though coming years had been good for my fitness (at least in Summer months) I have been really busy with…