Ultimate List With Top 10 Gudauri Hotels (Georgian Ski Resort)

2 October, 2015 | Hotel reviews | 116 seen

The holiday season is approaching, and if you have chosen Georgia as your final destination for skiing, there is a good reason to visit Georgian Winter capital Gudauri. It's famous of skiing slopes, heliskiing, hiking and of course wonderful relaxation accompanied by famous Georgian hospitality service. To make your stay in Gudauri even more pleasant, here is the ultimate list with top 20 Gudauri hotels, apartments, and guesthouses to choose from.

• Be prepared to take cash with yourself, it has been countless times when I have found that bank terminals are not actually working here.
• If you are heading to Gudauri to enjoy ski rides, pay attention to those hotels/apartments which actually are located close to the slopes (many of hotels are actually near the slopes, but they come with a price attached)

Here are two hotel reviews I've stayed so far in Gudauri - Hotel Shamo, Hotel Edelweiss

Alternatively, see:

• Bakuriani Hotels - Enjoy Your Winter Holidays in Georgian Ski Resort
• 6 Best Value Hotels in Borjomi, Georgia

Please note: All hotels listed in this article contains…

Actual Price Index in Tbilisi Market (Georgia) - At Start of October 2015

2 October, 2015 | Living in Georgia | 11 seen

Right, this might probably sound as yet another hipster style article and probably you are right. The thing is  - during month of October I have decided to write down my everyday expenses and in the next month I will provide article on Cost of Living in Tbilisi (Georgia). Since it was start of October, I headed to Google Play store to download first expense tracking app and started to write down my expenses.

I had to visit Tbilisi Dezerteer bazaar just to buy some groceries, and I decided hey it actually would be neat if I would write down actual prices for vegetables and fruits there. So I did. I must admit it was fun and entertaining to enter that app after each purchase I made (I don't want to miss a single item).

• 1 kg garlic - 6 GEL
• 1 kg potatoes - 0.70 GEL
• 1 bunch of spring onions - 0.60 GEL (or buy 3 for 1 lari)
• 1 bunch of parsley - 1 GEL
• 1 bunch of dills - 1 GEL
• 1 kg washed carrots - 2 GEL (1.5 GEL for regular ones)
• 1 watermelon (~6kg) - 5 GEL

As you can see it's not a perfect consumer basket, but hey that's what I…

How I Reached My Google AdSense Goal To Make $40.00/mo In 19 months

1 October, 2015 | Blogging | 10 seen

Wow, that title actually sounds pretty scary - some humble $40 per month in 19 months? Poor me! Well.. in fact I don't look on that as something very scary or low income. Back in the 2014 at start of the February, my blog was just about 4 months old, I decided (understood) that to actually succeed anyhow on this money making thing I should define some goals and I created my first goal - to earn enough to break even my hosting expenses (which at that time was $40/mo)

It's Official now - in the month of September 2015 I first time crossed $40.00 Google AdSense milestone, when in total earned $45.58.

Now in the past 19 months I have learned other ways you can make some lucrative income from your blog, and Google AdSense probably is not your best bet to get those dollars rolling to your bank account, but it (Google AdSense) has been on my blog for the most time of my bloggers carrier, and there is a reason for that - I look on Google AdSense earnings as a dividend payments from stocks - they are not huge, but it's good to have them.

In fact 19 months latter I'm paying even more for hosting, it…

Barbecue Festival in Akhtala (Armenia)

1 October, 2015 | Travel guides | 16 seen

At the start of September 2015, we booked a one day tour to Armenia. This trip took us to Lori province in Armenia, which actually is pretty close to Georgian border. During this trip we had a stops at Haghpat monastery, Sanahin monastery and Akhtala monastey. 

It turned out that at our final destination place - the Akhtala monastery, a barbecue festival was held. At start I did find it a bit strange - a barbeque and a monastery? Well... why not?

Akhtala monastery in Armenia

If you will look closely into above picture you will notice the smokes, that's because of barbeque is being prepared

Road to Akhtala Monastery

There were a lot of tourists both local and foreign that day visited Barbeque festival in Akhtala

Entrance gates at Akhtala monastery complex

Barbecue festival at Akhtala monastery

Or the Ancient world (Monastery complex) meet the New World (Coca Cola tents) and both are covered in the smokes of barbeque. So surreal, so true, so Armenia!

Armenian folk songs and dances held at Akhtala

Armenian…

Borjomi Cable Car (Aerial Tram)

30 September, 2015 | Tourism objects | 84 seen

One of the most interesting attractions in Georgian resort town of Borjomi is a cable car leaving from Mineral Water Park and heading uphill offering lovely and scenery views of Mineral Water park. Sometimes it's just enough to take that ride here to enjoy those scenery and beautiful views of Borjomi.

Cable car station in Borjomi

There is actually just one cable car available at this station. Price for a ride per person 3 GEL (as on September 2015)

Cable car interior

For me it looks this cable car stays here back from Soviet era days, but it has been at least once totally renovated back in 2005.

Glass dome house in Borjomi Mineral water park

Actually, that's a place where you can have a free Borjomi coming just out from underground spring. 

Aerial view to Borjomi gorge from cable car

Waterfall in Borjomi gorge 

If you will take a closer look through the opened cable car windows you will notice there is a lovely waterfall.

View to Borjomi valley

Borjomi cable car leaving station

Now it's up to…

First Georgia Expat Photographer Club Meeting

29 September, 2015 | Living in Georgia | 7 seen

On September 19th, 2015 First meeting of Georgia Expat Photographers Club happened. As some of you already know - in the middle of this Summer Johann approached me with his idea to create a photo/travel club, and back then we established a community on Facebook. Read more on that here: Georgia Expat Photography Club

Since our community was established on Facebook (if you are up to for something in Georgia, then Facebook is your best friend) we quickly gathered critical mass of fellow expats and photographers and just logical that our next step was to plan some meeting to discuss further things and plans.

Georgia Expat Photography Club members

At the start of September I met Johann again and we decided to create and boost an event on our best buddy Facebook, things went pretty fast and after spending $5 on Facebook ads we realized there are already more than 30 people interested to join our first meeting.

We planed our meeting at local Tbilisi Hangar bar (it's pretty popular among exapts in Tbilisi) and...

...and it worked out pretty well.

Instead of more…

Super moon Total Lunar Eclipse 2015: Tbilisi, Georgia

28 September, 2015 | Living in Georgia | 13 seen

Total lunar eclipse was fully visible in Tbilisi, Georgia on September 28, 2015 between 05:07 and 06:55 (Tbilisi time). I must admit that I really enjoy photography, but I had never ever done anything like this (photographing lunar eclipse) before. This night was one of the strangest and mysterious nights I have experienced this year (at least) - what was meant to be just a photography turned ou to be a man's rescue from cold waters of Mtkvari river. (Spoiler: This story has happy endings).

Here is the story:

At first I was totally not into this thing - I slept well, and then without reason we woke up at around 4:00 AM. Hmm, OK, that sometimes happens... Then we started walk around our apartment and then we remembered - hey, there is that lunar thing happening sometime today... OK, we are awake, there is that lunar thing... Right, let's prepare a coffee in thermos, take a tripod, telephoto lens and let's capture this lunar thing.

We decided to use Queen Tamar Bridge (Tamar Mephe) as our vantage point, I installed camera on a tripod and started to play with camera:

Super moon above…

Understanding focal length: Testing 18-55mm and 70-300mm lenses

27 September, 2015 | Digital Photography School | 2,387 seen

Welcome to the another digital photography school tutorial on understanding focal length.

It's not so long away when I entered magical world of Digital SLR photography, until then I was using simple compact sized cameras and did with them a simple thing - photographed things.

Well, things changed when I bought Canon EOS 1200D camera (Read: First Impressions Of Canon EOS 1200D Camera With 18-55mm Lens), then I started to improve my photography skills. Since the camera I bought came with a kit lenses (18mm-55mm) I was left with what I got. Those lenses are perfect, don't get me wrong, but I started to look for ways how to get a closer shots. 

I have heard other photographers telling, if you want closer shots, approach your object closer, so simple. And I do believe it's a valuable lesson. But what to do in case you can't approach your object close enough? It's time to change your glass (lens).

So after couple of months been playing with kit 18mm-55mm lenses I finally started to look on lenses to buy on Amazon, since I'm a complete newbie in this thing I decided I need something like up to 300mm lenses. The…

Rhododendron Garden in Cirava (Latvia)

26 September, 2015 | Tourism objects | 33 seen

If you are heading to a remote Latvian village Cirava, you have few options to make your visit pleasant here, like there are very interesting but abandoned manor complex and a lovely church.However, local residents at Cirava has something else to offer for both local and foreign travelers - a rhododendron garden located in territory of cemetery.

Well, if you are hoping to see here something like Keukenhofs tulip gardens, then .. then go to the Netherlands, here in Cirava you will find a small (selected) selection of rhododendrons, it's about 150 plants here. Opened just back in 2010 this garden park has some bright future prospects of attracting travelers from neighboring localities at least.

Rhododendron garden in Cirava

Best time to visit this garden while rhododendrons bloom: May, June. 

Rhododendron garden in Cirava

Each plant has it's own table containing information about plant

Blooming rhododendron in Cirava

Blooming rhododendron in Cirava

If you are in this part of the World during May/June and…

365 Day Photo Challenge Project

25 September, 2015 | Digital Photography School | 32 seen

In this post you will learn why I decided to take a personal 365 days photo project challenge and how I'm planing to complete it.

There are many different 365 projects, but they all share one goal in common: taking at least one photograph every single day, for a full year. Many photographers take that idea one step further to including taking, and posting, at least one photograph a day for an entire year. Some people start 365 projects on January 1st, but you can begin one at any time. Read more: Jumpstart Your Photography – Start a 365 Project

I like challenges and I really like to challenge myself. It was not so long ago, when at the start of October 2013, I challenged myself with a - 365 blog challenge. Soon it will turn 2 years since I opted in for this blogging thing, and those two years have taught me a lot - I feel that I have became a better marketer, I have developed some writing skills (still there are a lot of room for improvement) but what's most important I have changed the way I'm looking on things.

I'm not obsessed anymore with technical details I use to be. I'm more into an …

Akhtala Monastery in Armenia

24 September, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 20 seen

Akhtala monastery was our third and last stop during our short one day trip to Armenia, before returning to Tbilisi. Prior to Akhtala monastery we visited Haghpat monastery and Sanahin monastery. The truth is - our trip was made especially to visit Akhtala because of a barbeque festival was held here. I will cover some details (and photos) about that festival in some of the next blog posts, but today I decided to share some photography I captured here at Akhtala.

Just like Haghpat and Sanahin monasteries, Akhtala monastery is located in province of Lari in Armenia (close to Georgian border). However, unlike Haghpat and Sanahin which are plain Armenian Apostolic church elements, Akhtala shares some history with Georgian Orthodox church. 

Akhtala monastery

As you can see in the above image, monastery (church) is located on top of (inside) the fortress wall, turns out that the fortress played a major role in protecting the north-western regions of Armenia (Gugark) and is among the most well preserved of all in modern Armenia.

Uphill road leading to monastery complex

Since a barbeque festival was…

Sanahin Monastery in Armenia

23 September, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 24 seen

Sanahin monastery is located in province of Lori in Armenia, close to Georgian border. Sanahin monastery was second site we visited during our short one day trip to Armenia, just shortly after we visited Haghpat monastery.

I was so eager to master a photography using my DSLR camera and a tripod (it's damn hard to use a tripod in 30 minutes sightseeing tour) so I didn't actually paid much attention on history a local guides were telling about this place. After all I prefer to do Wikipedia search after or before, but not on site.

So it's all about photography this time, for the first time I have used Adobe Lightroom to edit (fine tune) my images, but unfortunately I was not shooting in RAW mode back there in Armenia, so all I have is edited jpegs.

Sanahin monastery in Armenia

The name Sanahin literally translates from Armenian as "this one is older than that one", presumably representing a claim to having an older monastery than the neighboring Haghpat Monastery.

Tourists at Sanahin monastery

As with Haghpat, Sanahin is frequented by an increasing number of tourists, due to its recent…

How To Recover Lost Password on Linode Server (SSH, Putty)

22 September, 2015 | Servers | 50 seen

Bad things happens time after time, and so did happened to me recently - after a longer pause I resumed work on a customers project, and I faced a problem - I had lost my password for accessing my Linode VPS. I must admit that I panicked a lot. Since this happened second time in a 3 years, I decided to wrap up a simple article to help me and others to quickly get connected back to our servers.

Interested in Linode VPS? You can actually have a Linode VPS starting as low as $10.00/mo

In this article you will learn how you can reset your password using Linode's dashboard, how to enter Lish Ajax Console for applying changes and how to change password using SSG for existing user(s)

So here are the steps to recover your password (gain back control over your server) using Linode Lish Ajax Console.

Login to your Linode account

Shut Down your Linode

​Linode offers to change your root password using Rescue tab, in order to change that password, your linode must be shut down

Reset Linode Password

Now you can reset your root password on Linode.

Now, if…

Haghpat Monastery in Armenia

20 September, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 30 seen

Haghpat monastery, together with Sanahin monastery, are placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List since 1996.

At the start of September we booked a one day tour from Tbilisi to Armenia, and I had chance to visit both Haghpat and Sanahin monasteries. Since this time I was less into history, more into photography, that's what I exactly did - I photographed both places. Today I will start with photography of Haghpat Monastery in Lori province.

Landscape at Haghpat monastery

Look at the fog! I really enjoy days like this - it's green, there are mountains covered in lovely fog.

Haghpat Monastery complex

The location of Haghpat Monastery was chosen so that it overlooks the Debed River in northern Armenia's Lori region. It was built, not on a peak, but halfway up a hillside on a site chosen to afford protection and concealment from prying eyes and also in response to a kind of monastic humility.

Chapel inside Haghpat monastery

Our group had only 30 minutes to do sightseeing at this place, so it was damned hard to set up a tripod, find that excellent …

Blog Monthly Online Income Report - August 2015 - $880.09

19 September, 2015 | Blogging | 45 seen

Welcome everybody to the 20th online income report of Reinis Fischer blog. In this post I will cover some info about earnings I have made in month of August solely with my blog (www.reinisfischer.com). I like to call this phenomena - a smart passive online income. 

In case you are wondering why should someone publish online his/her earnings - the answer is pretty simple - I like transparency and these reports help me to observe my progress or bounces. Hopefully my reports can give some inspiration to you as well. 

If you want to learn more about how to start a blog and make it successful - I recently started a blog post covering things that matters. 

In August my blog earned a total of $952.59 what is an impressive increase of 60.44% if compared to previous month (July) when I earned in total $593.73. 

• Daily earnings: $30.73

Technically speaking this August has been the best month this year, after month of February when I got $940.05. the only difference is  - in August I had more…