Hotel Best Western Modena District, Italy

14 March, 2016 | Hotel reviews | 11 seen

Best Western Modena District hotel was our last hotel in Italy during our week long travels across the country. 

This Best Western hotel is a 5-minute drive from the Campogalliano exit of the A22 Motorway, 10 km from Modena. The property offers a gym, and free outdoor parking.

At check in I asked can they give us a smokers room, the receptionist lady told they have a lovely, large smokers room, which is designed for disabled persons, we didn't mind, after seeing our room - we concluded, they just love disabled persons here in Italy - super spacious room, double soft king-size bed and a very spacious bathroom. Best they had Russian TV channels (which was rare in Italy, most probably a lot of Russian tourists visits Modena vicinity)

Best Western Modena District hotel in Italy

The Modena District has excellent connections via local motorways and national roads. The cities of Bologna and Parma are around 35 minutes away by car. 

King size bed

All rooms at Best Western Modena District are large and air-conditioned. They come with a contemporary design, free Wi-Fi, and an LCD TV with film and sports channels. Some rooms have a balcony and/or wooden floors.

Flat screen TV

A spacious bathroom

Take away meal in hotel

Although there is a great restaurant at Hotel Mode District, we decided to visit local groceries store to buy some junk food and enjoy our evenings (we stayed here for some 3 days actually) by watching TV and consuming local junk food.

A buffet breakfast is available each morning. The hotel's restaurant, Osteria dell'Emilia, serves specialities of Emilia Romagna. There is also a small shop selling Modena wines and foods.

We paid about EUR 70 per night and would return here without any doubts.

Book now on Booking.com

Modena Town Hall

14 March, 2016 | Tourism objects | 21 seen

Looking for free toursit attraction sites in Italian town of Modena? You might visit Modena Town Hall. 

Facing the Piazza Grande (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the Town Hall of Modena was put together in the 17th and 18th centuries from several pre-existing edifices built from 1046 as municipal offices.

Modena Town Hall, Italy

It is characterized by a Clock Tower (Torre dell'Orologio, late 15th century), once paired with another tower (Torre Civica) demolished after an earthquake in 1671. In the interior, noteworthy is the Sala del Fuoco ("Fire Hall"), with a painted frieze by Niccolò dell'Abbate (1546) portraying famous characters from Ancient Rome against a typical Emilia background. The Camerino dei Confirmati ("Chamber of the Confirmed") houses one of the symbols of the city, the Secchia Rapita, a bucket kept in memory of the victorious Battle of Zappolino(1325) against Bologna. This relic inspired the poem of the same title by Alessandro Tassoni. Another relic from the Middle Ages in Modena is the Preda Ringadora, a rectangular marble stone next to the palace porch, used as a speakers' platform, and the statue called La Bonissima ("The Very Good"): the latter, portraying a female figure, was erected in the square in 1268 and later installed over the porch.

At Modena Town Hall

Tartine Brasserie - French Restaurant in Tbilisi

13 March, 2016 | Restaurant reviews | 22 seen

Tartine Brasserie is one of the rare places in Tbilisi where brunch is served in weekends. I have been in research for perfect breakfast restaurant in Tbilisi for past couple of weeks already, last week I tried so called breakfast menu at Barbarestan - Wine Shop and Restaurant in Tbilisi it didn't worked well. So another Saturday morning - another Tbilisi restaurant.

Located in the heart of Tbilisi Old Town, this place have been on my radar for a very long time already (some few years ago I actually tried some time here, but back then I didn't had ultimate list of Tbilisi restaurant reviews). In fact - we were looking for a brunch at this place some month ago already, but again, we were here some 30 minutes before brunch was served (starting 10AM), so we left for another close by restaurant - Samikitno / Machakhela Restaurant review (Meidan square, Tbilisi)

It's time to tell a photo story of Tartine Brasserie

Brasserie Tartine in Tbilisi

Located at the Meidan Square Brasserie Tartine is one of the rare places in Tbilisi where brunch is served

Brunch menu

I did find it a little bit difficult to understand how things actually works here, brunch is brunch right - you are paying some amount of money and you eat all you wish available from menu. But here we had to choose some combo instead of brunch. So I went for a Panini De Poulet combo served with French fries, salad leaves, large cappuccino and orange juice. Price for such combo - 22 GEL. We ordered another combo, with the same large cappuccino, orange juice, fruit cocktail (kiwi, pear, banana, pineapple), croissant with chocolate, toast, egg, butter and jam.

Large cup of cappuccino 

Fruit cocktail set

French fries and panini set

Interior at Tartine Brasserie

The bottom line

Tartine Brasserie is lovely and pretty affordable place, located in the heart of Tbilisi Old Town. Their brunch menu offer could be a little bit more juicier, but hey - the combo sets worked very well. No doubts  -this place is among my recommended Tbilisi restaurants. Our overall bill - 44 lari. 

How to Get around in Tbilisi by Taxify (Taxi Mobile Application)

13 March, 2016 | Living in Georgia | 13 seen

There is a very convenient way of getting around in Tbilisi by taxi using mobile application Taxify.

I probably first heard of this company at the end of 2014 by visiting Georgian Startup challenge organized by GITA. 

For my travels around Tbilisi I mostly use taxi either by calling to the central or just by catching taxi on the street (I prefer second over first still). Taxis are cheap in Tbilisi, but you never know about cars technical condition, the cabin cleanliness and so on. There have been cases I would rather call my taxi a tank instead of a car - broken handles, battered windshields, unbalanced seats and so on. Should I mention - smoky salon? As a smoker I don't pay much attention to the last, but I believe a non-smokers could get feeling he/she will get all those thousands lung diseases a smokers develop in their lifetime.

It was so until recently by using a random street taxi a noticed a huge Lenovo tablet in cars windshield and Taxify app installed on it - so I asked to the taxi driver - what does he thinks of it? Well, we all probably have heard of Uber - which is a pioneer for taxi apps. Driver was very satisfied with Taxify told me a lot of good words about it, and then I decided it is time to give it a try.

Soon, Taxify was installed on our phones - and we did the first test drive -  from our apartment to Vake park. We went on the street, opened an app, which automatically detected our location and we had an option to chose a driver. We picked one randomly and watched in the phones screen our car approaching (real-time GPS tracking).

Taxify real-time tracking app

The wait times for Taxify is short - in city it's about 3-5 minutes (day time), from a more remote suburbs up to 10-15 minutes.

Taxi was clean (although with a wheel in right side) - driver didn't engaged with us in meaningless conversations (like where are we from - it's hard to explain that we are from Tbilisi actually, been living here for a very long time already). I was pleasantly surprised been billed just 4 GEL for this ride (usually it takes at least some 5 Lari, but you must know how to bargain then)

Another time we decided to use Taxify to get to the East Point Shopping mall from Tbilisi Old Town - just brilliant, we paid just 6 lari for this drive. Then we used Taxify to get back from East Point to our apartment, this time our bill was 7.4 GEL (As a bargain person I wouldn't call this a super deal, because I have negotiated on street taxis price down to 6 GEL for such ride, but taking into account that bargaining is not to meant for everyone and the difference is not so huge - I'm very happy with such prices and clean cars).

Invoice from Taxify

Later been back to the computer I received invoices for our drive - which is just brilliant if you are a business traveler in Tbilisi, so you can submit your bill to accountancy department. 

The Bottom Line

Next time for your short trips in Tbilisi try Taxify app, ypu wont regret it.

About Taxify

Taxify is the fastest growing transport technology company in the Baltics & Eastern Europe. Taxify is building a smartphone app that connects riders with local taxis and private drivers.

Taxify mobile application is available for Android and iOS phones. Users can choose their car based on arrival time, prices and service level. After requesting users can see their car arriving on the map in real-time and pay for the ride via Taxify app.

Taxify was established in 2013 in Estonia and is currently operating in 10 countries - Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Serbia, The Netherlands and Mexico with plans to open several new countries in Europe.

Taxify has received 1.5M funding from international investors from Skype, Pipedrive, Adcash, Rubylight, TMT Investments and others.

Learn more: www.taxify.eu

How to add Custom Markers for Gmap Module Drupal

12 March, 2016 | Drupal Development | 12 seen

Gmap custom markers are cool way to enhance your Drupal site. My blog heavily really on Drupal Views + Gmap + Location module. Most of the articles listed in Restaurant reviews, tourist attractions or hotel reviews are nicely displayed on map and pinned with custom created markers.

Recently, when updating Gmap module to the latest stable version all my markers disappeared so I had to re-upload markers. That' s how I decided to write a simple tutorial on how to add custom markers in Drupal using Gmap module.

Custom markers using Gmap module

All markers in Gmap module are stored in markers folder, we will create a new folder inside it and will upload our config files and actual marker pins to it. There are a dozen of free markers you can download or you can draw your markers if you are familiar with Photoshop or any other drawing program. 

• Create a new folder Custom in sites/all/modules/gmap/markers so it looks like this /sites/all/modules/gmap/markers/custom
• Create a new file custom.ini and paste following

• Upload custom marker ico file to custom folder (from above example it' s named services.png)
• For adding more custom markers use following sytax in custom.ini file

N.B. If you have cache enabled, clear cache, run cron and finally delete gmap_markers.js file from files/js in order Drupal can regenerate it

How to add custom marker for Drupal Taxonomy pages

I prefer to add custom markers to taxonomy pages - choose your term name, click edit and scroll down for Gmap Marker settings dropdown menu (from where select your custom marker)

Drupal taxonomy pages with custom marker

N.B. You will have to enable Gmap for taxonomies from modules page before actually using it.

How to display custom marker on map (Gmap + Views)

Build your view listing all your nodes (or just one)

• Set display to GMAP
• ​From Format: GMAP Settings change marker handling to By term (for node views)

Drupal Gmap marker handling

Wasn't so hard, right? 

Now, if you enjoyed this article don' t forget to drop me a comment or alternatively check out these Drupal tutorials on working with Gmap module:

• Building A Travel Map - Drupal Way (Gmap + Views + Selective Filters)
• How To Create Drupal Views Distance Filter using Location module
• Drupal views taxonomy map

Pruning trees and shrubs

12 March, 2016 | Home Remodeling | 10 seen

One of my biggest challenges last summer was unstoppable fight with grass (see: Lawn Mowing), not to mention larger scale works on roof replacement. But there was another major issue we faced - overgrown bushes and totally deprived landscape. 

When dealing with trees and shrubs it's not only about landscape, but also about their health. You want healthy landscape right? Now, we had a really deprival and unhealthy landscape in our backyard territory.

Overgrown bushes

In the middle somewhere there are cherry trees, plum trees and apple trees. Barely can notice anyone yet.

I was tired from yesterday's roof removal works, and instead of myself trimming and chain sawing here I asked our worker to take care of this. God, that guy was our best find that summer, he is a virtues at anything he does, without help of him I doubt we would finish 20% of our works there. That is a good lesson, you cannot handle everything - you need help to achieve your goals. 

Pile of twigs

They are going to that huge fire place together with old wooden shingle from roof (Actually, you can sell twigs to some wood chip guys)

Trimmed area

Now you can at least notice some shapes and forms of trees growing here.

Sawn log

Now, from these logs a nice fire wood will be made and lovely Christmas evenings will be spent in front of the fireplace (still need to construct that before)

Roof Works, Part 5 - And once more let's remove old roofing

12 March, 2016 | Home Remodeling | 8 seen

Think roof works are cool? In fact - roofing is one of the hardest works in construction and if you have decided by your own to replace your old roofing - think again! 

Anyway - let me show - how once again (See: Replacing Roof - Part 1: Removing old roofing) we removed old wooden shingles from our rural house back in Summer of 2015. This time I hired two workers to help me out with demolishing works and ...things moved quickly. We were able to completely remove old roofing from the second roof plane and collect the construction waste and transport to nearby meadow (to later burn it). Since the construction waste consisted just from the old wooden shingles - a nice fireplace was the only suitable option (Make sure you bookmark my blog - as latter I provide some cool pictures on burning that shingle actually)

Removing old roofing

As you can see the mess is pretty huge.

To make works faster today - I took chain saw, saw up lath, while my assistants followed me with axes' and a lot of hand power to break down those shingles. It was really good synced team work and we moved on quickly today.

Proposed fireplace location

Fireplace is located close to the pond, so if things go wrong, we have at least a pond nearby. In above picture you can see - new metal roof in front, old shingle roofing form the first roof plane in the background.

Cleared beams

Hooray - we have officially removed old roofing. For both sides it took about 3 weeks with a lot of interruptions to completely remove old roofing - while, on the other side we have already leveled beams and nailed first laths.

...and the waste is collected

Making a super huge fireplace

Now, it will take a few additional days or about a week, when we will actually start to cover up this beautiful old house with a new metal roofing. Did I just told beautiful? Yes, it really starts looking beautiful. 

Actual Price Index at Tbilisi Market - March 2016

11 March, 2016 | Living in Georgia | 8 seen

Yup, another hipster style article about actual prices for consumer goods at local Tbilisi market (Bazroba).

It has been a while since I decided to measure how lari/dolar exchange rates influence actual prices, if you, just like me are an expat living in Georgia - you most probably have faced the consequences of weak lari against US dollar. Thus - I don't believe that foreign currency should affect local economy. National currency of Georgia is lari and lari we are spending in markets, metro or marshurtkas - even for rent we are paying in lari (well, adjusted to current exchange rates to US dollar)

Back at the October 1st 2016 GEL/USD/EUR exchange rates were following:

• GEL/USD: 1GEL = 0.42USD
• GEL/EUR: 1 GEL = 0.37EUR

Back then I paid following sum of money for following goods:

• 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

Today's (March 11, 2016) FEL/USD/EUR exchange rates are:

• GEL/USD: 1GEL = 0.41 USD (down by one dollar cent)
• GEL/EUR: 1 GEL = 0.36 EUR (down by one euro cent)

The good news here - during last six month lari has been more or less stable against dollar and euro, well it has lost a bit it's value, but nothing to cal a panacea (as it happened some two years ago)

Today I bought following items:

Today's catch

• 1 kg potatoes 1 GEL (the price is up for about 30 tetri, if compared to tetri, but you can find potatoes for 0.7 and even 0.7 GEL per kilo - it's Spring and it's normal price for potatoes is higher than in Autumn)
• 1 bunch of spring onions (Azeri ladies dont prefer selling just a bunch, instead they sells 3 bunches) - 1 GEL (the same price)
• 1 bunch of parsley - 1 GEL
• 1 bunch of dills - 1 GEL (The nice Azeri ladies at Bazroba sold me a combo of dills and parsley for 1 lari) - the same price
• 6 bananas - 3.5 GEL (new in my consumer basket)
• 1 bunch of radishes - 1 GEL (the same nice Azeri ladies)
• 1 kg red pepper - 5 GEL
• 1 kg onions - 1.3 GEL

If compared to prices in October, they seems about the same, with a little correction, that it's Spring and for some items it's just normal to be higher priced.

The Bottom line

Life in Georgia for veggie lovers is really cheap - for all those goods listed above, I spent 16.7 lari (6.92 USD / 6.22 EUR)

New Life for Agmashenebeli avenue, Tbilisi

11 March, 2016 | | 19 seen

A major and very much needed reconstruction works recently (February 2016) have begun on one of the major Tbilisi streets - David Agmanashebeli avenue. Funded by Tbilisi Development Fund (which is pretty much financed from city budget + private investor capital) promises a completely renovated street by the Autumn 2016.

It was mid February and we decided to explore how construction  works were held on this street. Another reason I find these construction works very exciting - a few years ago we lived in this neighborhood on Rome street, back then we could only fantasy that one day city will take care of this city part as well and some day it will look here like in these Postcards from Tbilisi (which is the beginning of the same David Afmanashebeli avenue)

But for now take a look how it looked alike here in mid February.

Reconstruction works near Saarbrucken square

Wooden beams and laths

Construction workers

Agmanashebeli avenue

Looks like a scene from some war movie.

Scaffolding on Agmanashebeli avenue in Tbilisi

Old metal ornaments in wooden doors

Renovation works

Old plaster is been removed

Old brick gateway

Inside in the yard behind these gates there is an abandoned and almost ruined Armenian church, it would be just cool if city development fund would renovate that church as well.

Dust

I submitted above image as my day Day 143/365 image for my photo project on Flickr

Metal gates

Window grating with spider web

B&W is cool, right?

Construction works

Another interesting gateway

Scaffolding on Agmaneshebeli avenue

Very cool architecture elements on Agmanashebeli avenue in Tbilisi

​About Tbilisi development Fund

Non-profit legal entity Tbilisi Development Fund was established in 2010. The aim of the Fund which is established under the City Mayor's office is elaboration of the strategy of the rehabilitation and fortification of Tbilisi including its historical parts, planning specific projects, their implementation and / or the control of their performance. Along with the funds allocated from the state budget the Fund is planning to attract funds from international, foreign organizations, and begins active negotiations with donors and private investors. Fund will implement new projects based on the research, in which will be involved art historians, architects, designers and other experts.

Tbilisi Development Fund in the process of working on the development of the City Development Strategy is working closely with both governmental and non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations and the media to conduct the reconstruction and development process in a transparent and effective manner.The fund will explore the city's historic neighborhoods tourist and economic potential, it’s working on the strategy how to use this potential and contributes in the implementation of the important projects for Tbilisi development. Learn more: www.tdf.ge of visit Facebook page

Chops by the River - Restaurant & Grill

11 March, 2016 | Restaurant reviews | 32 seen

Chops by the River restaurant and grill is now among my favorite Tskenti restaurants, and allow me to say among Tbilisi restaurants as well. Located in village of Tskneti this restaurant offers single priced grill menus and very pleasant atmosphere.

I have heard of this place by some friend before, but the circumstances that made us actually to visit this restaurant was a little bit strange. As an active outdoor lovers we were off to hiking trip from Tskenti to Turtle lake, unfortunately this route is not anymore accessible, because of landslides near Tskenti. Read more: Failed attempt to complete Tskneti - Turtle lake hiking route

After hiking some 2km in the nowhere we decided to turn back. We agreed, we should visit Chops by the River because we have heard of it and it is located somewhere in Tskenti. We wondered how do Georgians call this place, we came out with - Chopi bai de riveri. I continued our route back to civilization and sung Chops by the river.

We were back on the road (paved) and at start I decided to take a taxi to this place - unfortunately taxi driver thought Chopi bai de riveri is located in Tbilisi... So .. I decided to take bus #34. So we did. Turned out Chops by the River is located at the last stop of bus #34.

Story can be told now:

Chops by the river restaurant in Tskneti

We entered this restaurant and it looked it is not working, although doors were opened. After short glimpse of wandering waiter approached - I asked - are you working? Yup, they are working. I asked for a table on the terrace. We were completely alone in the large restaurant complex. But we have been use to it for last couple of years here in Georgia.

Menu at Chops by the River

Menu is simple and complicated altogether - basically you pay fixed price and eat as much as you can, unfortunately it is hard to understand what to order here. Pricing is divided in two levels: Grill level and Restaurant level. We chose two Green zone plus all you can eat meats for GEL 35 and ordered God knows what (I was told  I can choose 8 meat meals, I decided to stop with 4, but at the end we got even a baked trout - God knows what, but worth of it.)

Outdoor multi level terrace

It must be very cozy in mild summer nights here

Assorted Georgian cheeses

I believe these were one from the salad kind

Sauces for the meat

Grilled meat and vegetables

A hamburger

Our table

Inside interior 

Lovely mood

Got some ideas for our upcoming home remodeling tasks here.

Piano

Tea in the pot

The bottom Line

Although our bill here was well above hundred lari here, I don't regret a tetri spent here. Superb interior, lovely atmosphere and great grilled meat. Highly recommend!

• Learn more: Chops by the River Facebook page

Drupal IMCE very slow on uploading images - here is how to fix

11 March, 2016 | Drupal Development | 6 seen

It has been about a year, since I noticed IMCE upload is damn slow when uploading images for my photo stories or just any other articles. For a very long time I was convinced that it's some cdn or JavaScript incompatibility (because sometimes, just sometimes IMCE upload worked just fine)

It was until today, when it started to take more than one minute to properly load that modal window of IMCE upload.

IMCE upload window

I quickly realized, IMCE folder was using about 1GB of memory (default upload folder -/sites/default/files) which stored more than 7,000 images - each time IMCE had to do a check up on all those files. I decided to look on IMCE settings, can I change default upload folder and start fresh? Luckily I was able to that:

From IMCE config - admin/config/media/imce/profile/edit/1 - create a new upload directory for IMCE

IMCE upload directory

Woila - after applying new settings - IMCE was blasting fast again. Hope this helps.

Postcards from Modena, Italy

10 March, 2016 | | 12 seen

Modena is a little charming town in the middle of Italy. Known as the birthplace of Worlds famous Ferrari car.

We spent a few days in vicinity of Modena (during our recent trip to Italy), enjoyed a colorful facades of houses, narrow streets, a lot of prosciutto and of course great Italian coffee.

Back at the time - I was tired of photography and made just a few random shots here:

Colored residential buildings and window shutters in Modena

An ancient town, and seat of an archbishop, it is now known as "the capital of engines", since the factories of the famous Italian sports car makers Ferrari, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Pagani and Maserati are, or were, located here and all, except Lamborghini, have headquarters in the city or nearby. One of Ferrari's cars, the 360 Modena, was named after the town itself.

Prosciutto 

Modena has a rich and diversified cuisine, often including meats, hams and salamis.

Narrow cobbled streets of Modena

Architecture in Modena

Piazza Grande square in Modena

Juliet's House in Verona, Italy

10 March, 2016 | Tourism objects | 34 seen

As testified by the coat of arms on the internal arch-way of the court-yard, this house belonged to the “Dal Cappello” or “Cappelletti”. The building, dating back to the 13th and renovated in the last century, features the balcony where Romeo promised his beloved Juliet eternal love in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy.

I had a chance to visit World famous Juliet's balcony on January 2nd, 2016 - it was a very rainy and cold day In Verona

Juliet's Balcony in Verona

Well - balcony as balcony right? But:

Young couples are still very moved by the right of this house and unmarried people touch Juliet’s statue (a kind of good-luck ritual) in the hope of finding the love of their life. How many hopes and desires has this court-yard witnessed over the ages?

Crowd gathering at Juliet's House

The interior of the house can be visited and you can stand on Juliet’s balcony and re-live the “ high-light” of the earthly life, as well as admire the furniture and the beautiful velvet costumes worn by the actors in the Metro Goldwyn Meyer’s colossal “ Romeo and Juliet”.

Opening hours: Tuesday-Sunday 8,30-19,30 – Monday 13,30-19,30.

Prices: Standard € 6.00 – Reduced € 4.50 (groups minimum 20 persons, students 14-30 years old and over 60) – € 1.00 (Schools and young people 8 - 13 years old ) - € 1.00 the 1° Sunday of the month for everyone (from January to May and from October to December) – Free entrance  with the Verona Card.

See more: Juliet's House

Let's Encrypt to fix HTTPS Certificate incompatibility with Windows XP and Google Chrome

9 March, 2016 | Servers | 33 seen

It was about a month ago - when I successfully installed secure https pages for my blog, I opted for using free certificate provided by Let's Encrypt certificate authority. I first heard Let's Encrypt certificate authority from KeyCDN.

It was super easy and fast to create SSL certificates for my Linode powered Nginx box. Unfortunately - just a few days later I noticed a deadly screen - Your connection is not private

Your connection is not private Google Chrome screen

I was using Windows XP machine with Google Chrome. I panicked, stressed - then I opened my blog on my default laptop (Windows 8) - everything was fine - green bar was visible, not any problems with connection. I went back to the Windows XP machine - deadly screen.

I googled - https windows xp - and soon I ended on Let's Encrypt community forums - there were many folks just as me complaining about the same issue - Let' s encrypt certificate does not validates on Windows XP machines.

...there is some information suggesting that the Name Constraints on our cross-signed certificate from IdenTrust are the reason IE and Chrome on Windows XP don't support Let's Encrypt certificates...

Ok, I know Windows discontinued any support for XP already back in 2014 and anytime sooner or later Windows XP will be completely dead, I decided to check out my Google Analytics statistics - how many of blog visitors are actually accessing my site from XP. The number was about 4 percent. since my site is getting about 50,000 unique visitors a month - four percent is a lot ~ 2,000 users each month cannot access my site and even worst they sees a deadly warning message that it is not safe at my place.

I started to look for a fix for this issue - there were few workarounds - to disable HTTPS at all, I didn't wanted to disable HTTPS, so I went looking for more fixes - another was not using 301 redirects (turn of http to https redirect) - which I don't like either - because users might get to my blog by direct links, and if they are https, they still will see deadly screen. Make some redirect just for Windows XP... again, too complicated.

There was another solution - not using Let's Encrypt certificate (after all it's Let's Encrypt problem, not mine) and buy some SSL certificate from trusted vendor. Thus I already started to love Let's Encrypt and idea to switching off, just because of Windows XP, didn't sound fair.

So I continued to stick around community on forums - looking are there any updates, when and if it will be fixed, for a long time there were no solutions or fixes. Today (on March 9) a miracle happened - by reading on forum I learnt that Let' s Encrypt will fix this compatibility issue before March 22, 2016

ETA: Before March 22, 2016

A bug in Windows XP causes parsing of our current cross-signature from IdenTrust to fail. We will be correcting this by getting new cross-signatures from IdenTrust which work on Windows XP.

If so - Let's encrypt you rock!

Number of Passengers served in Georgian Airports (2010-2015)

9 March, 2016 | Airports | 15 seen

Civil aviation is slowly but for certain growing in Republic of Georgia. There were in total four airports in Georgia in 2016. Tbilisi International Airport, Kutaisi David the Builder International Airport, Batumi International Airport and Mestia Queen Tamara Airport.

As a frequent air traveler I have used two of Georgian airports very often,  Tbilisi airport and Kutaisi airport, I have been at Batumi airport but never have flied from there and I haven't yet ever been to Mestia airport, thus I once almost booked a flight from Tbilisi to Mestia. Read more: Flights to Mestia from Tbilisi will resume starting July 18th by Service Air

Now, the biggest miracle of these four airports have been Kutaisi airport, opened for public just at the end of 2012, mainly served by low cost airlines - Wizz Air. Just recently Wizz Air announced it will use Kutaisi as its base and will open seven new routes to mainland Europe (Germany, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria) from here. So I decided to see how passenger statistics have changed over last couple of years. Back at then end of October 2013 I did my first examination of statistics - see: Statistics about Georgian airports 2010-2012

My finding at the end of 2013 were following:

My future forecasts is that Kutaisi airport will became second largest soon, this or next year, by outperforming Batumi airport. Why such confidence? In 6 month period (Jan-Jully, 2013) Kutaisi airport has served already 141 844 passengers, and they are adding more flights to and from Kutaisi in future.

It is time to see were my forecasts right or false.

Data used in bellow tables are from: Georgian Civil Aviation Agency

Numbers of passengers served in Tbilisi airport (2010-2015)

by regular and chartered flights

Tbilisi airport has reported some serious year on year growth for the last five years, in 2015 serving about 1,85 million passengers what is about a ~17% growth if compared to previous year of 2014.

It wouldn't be a surprise seeing Tbilisi serving 2 million passengers in 2016.

Numbers of passengers served in Kutaisi David the Builder International Airport (2010-2015)

2015 has shown a dip in passenger traffic in Kutaisi airport by about 16%..  Frankly speaking I was looking for much greater growth rates in Kutaisi airport, but previous 2 years have showed stable around 200,000 passengers annually. Probably the new routes which will be opened later this year will boost again passenger count in Kutaisi?

Numbers of passengers served in Batumi International Airport (2010-2015)

Batumi seems haven't lost it's second largest Georgian airport title, served 226 thousands passengers in 2015

Numbers of passengers served in Mestia Queen Tamara Airport (2010-2015)

Mestia is the smallest airport in Georgia, nothing much to comment here, yet.

Numbers of passengers served in all Georgian airports (2010-2015)

The total passenger traffic growth over the last five years are pretty much incredible. All four Georgian airports combined have increased total number of passengers from less than a million in 2010 to more than 2 millions in 2015. Which means just one - civil aviation in Georgia is on fast track. Any forecasts? 4 million and more passengers by the end of decade in all Georgian airports combined.