Tallinn Bus Station

17 February, 2016 | Railway / Bus / Ferry | 28 seen

The Tallinn Bus Station  is the main long-distance bus station of Tallinn, Estonia. The bus station is located in the southeastern part of the city centre (Kesklinn District), in Juhkentali neighborhood. 

When I was a young exchange student in Finland, I used this bus station frequently to travel back to my native Riga (Helsinki - Tallinn by ferry). Last time I was here, probably was back in 2006.

We arrived here from Riga bus station using Lux Express bus to celebrate my 30th birthday in Tallinn and I was pleasantly surprised to see how this place has changed (seems it has gone though renovation in 2012 or 2013).

Tallinn Bus Station in Summer 2015

You should be able to travel from Tallinn bus station to Tartu, Parnu, Viljani, Narva, Riga (and some more domestic routes. Please check ticket info here.

Fried Land Fast Food in Venice

16 February, 2016 | Restaurant reviews | 69 seen

After we finally arrived to Venice, settled up in our hotel room, it was still a few hours until New Year, we decided to locate some charming Venice restaurant, but they all either were fully booked or just looked suspicious, suddenly we noticed a small fast food shop, and I decided to take a look, so that's how we found Fried Land in Venice.

Huge was my surprise when searching for this places coordinates I found that on TripAdvisor Fried Land ranks #1 as Venice Restaurants (as on January 27, 2016) - Well, the explanation can be simple, the dude who prepared shaurmas for us, asked would we leave a review on TripAdvisor (and probably he has been asking it to all the rest folks visiting this place, and most probably that's the reason this place ranks so high, anyway - a good tip you can learn from this place, if you are an owner of small fast food shop and you're targeting your audience on TripAdvisor).

At Fried Land in Venice, Italy

We order two chicken kebabs and pasta with tuna fish, In total we paid about EUR 15. Don't get me wrong, this place is lovely and very affordable, but when it comes to the taste, nothing compares to kebabs you can get in Tbilisi (Shaurma Club on Tamapr Mephe) or noodles at Fire Wok. 

Menu at Fried Land

The great thing, this is very tourist friendly place, as menu items and staff speaks English. 

Fried Land in Venice, Italy

Check out other reviews on TripAdvisor or follow Friend Land on Facebook

Hotel Guerrini Review in Venice, Italy

16 February, 2016 | Hotel reviews | 27 seen

We booked hotel Guerrini in Venice for New Years night (2016), because of it's location - Located just off the characteristic Venetian street of Lista di Spagna and 400 m from Santa Lucia Railway Station, Hotel Guerrini offers free Wi-Fi and simple air-conditioned rooms.

Now the biggest surprise was to learn out, that heating in our room didn't worked (seems it didn't worked for all the hotel), so called simple air conditioner also didn't helped much (it constantly showed +17C). Bathroom (for the price paid) was a parody (small, narrow)... I could complain of this place a lot, but probably that's just the way how they treat tourists in city center, right? Ask high price and give a bad service.

Queen size bed at Hotel Guerrini

No extra blankets or whatsoever, when I called to the reception desk and complained about freezing atmosphere in room, I was told they are going to fix this soon (in fact after some hour they did turned on heating, but turned it of after 2 AM, when we just returned from Marks Square, so, yes a pleasant surprise - to return to cold room in New Years night.

Inside yard at hotel Guerrini in Venice

Guerrini Hotel is set in a historical building and includes a bar where a buffet breakfast is served every morning. Guests rooms boast traditional furnishings and tiled floors.

Breakfasts at Hotel Guerrini

Yard at Hotel Guerrini in Venice, Italy

About Hotel Guerrini

Located just off the characteristic Venetian street of Lista di Spagna and 400 m from Santa Lucia Railway Station, Hotel Guerrini offers free Wi-Fi and simple air-conditioned rooms. Guerrini Hotel is set in a historical building and includes a bar where a buffet breakfast is served every morning. Guests rooms boast traditional furnishings and tiled floors. Guests can reach St. Mark’s Basilica with a short journey on the vaporetto water bus that stops at Ferrovia near the Guerrini Hotel, or with a pleasant 30-minute stroll along Venice’s charming streets. Hotel Guerrini is 850 m from Piazzale Roma car parking area and bus station, and 13 km from Venice Marco Polo Airport.  Cannaregio is a great choice for travellers interested in scenery, city walks and walking.

The Bottom Line.

Although this hotel is located in great location, for the price asked (we paid about EUR 140), I wouldn't book this hotel again, at least not in Winter season.

Replacing Roof - Part 3: Removing the old roofing (Losing Chimney)

15 February, 2016 | Home Remodeling | 10 seen

Now, when you are familiar with part 1 and part 2, it's time to tell the third part on home remodeling series replacing roofing. 

Today's roof replacing adventures were about the most dangerous so far (with happy ending). It all started in quiet August morning, when I get up earlier, to remove old roofing, so we can continue our works on leveling beams and dragging over crosswind sheet latter that day. I was waiting help (brother and dad) to arrive around a noon, so I had a plenty of time to excel my demolisher skills.

Today we faced unpleasant discovery, we had to remove atop of the chimney so the roof would  be in one straight level (more on that bellow)

Wooden boards around chimney

The floor / ceiling was already rotted (due to leaky roof), I created a simple construction to somehow strengthen this area, so I have an access to remove old wooden shingles. Some days ago I tried to clean this space, read more: Loft cleaning - Preparation works for replacing that leaky roof

Hole in the roof

I started to remove old wooden shingles from second part of roof, started at the top, using two tools - chain saw and an ax

Cleared beams from the top to the bottom

Almost like in that song: 

When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom and I see you again
Yeah yeah yeah hey (Helter Skelter) 

View from the loft to the apple orchard

It was already a midday, when handy hands arrived, so we continued works. 

Painting wooden lath with antiseptic & demolishing a chimney

Now, I found above picture VERY EPIC - I could title it - "Father and son", from the left my father is painting laths with wooden antiseptic, while atop of the house (next to the chimney) my brother is demolishing chimney, brick by brick. This picture is both scary and funny. Needlessly to say - Every time a person climbed a top of the roof, my heart started to beat faster and I was actually praying God, not anything bad happen. So, the guy up there (brother) is trying carefully to remove brick after brick from the chimney, so roof would be in straight level (it wasn't), there ws about 20cm mismatch from one chimney side and other.

A few seconds latter... the chimney was gone.

Chimney is gone

And together with it - a half of it's supportive construction, as well one beam have been kicked out of it's place. My brother hoped, if he would push hard enough, he could get rid of a few brick lines altogether. Instead of a few, he got about a half. The chimney gave up, and went down with unbelievable force, breaking my weak supportive floor construction, ending somewhere in the apple orchard and leaving my brother hanging in the air. Very exiting.

Now after that, we decided to take a break.We left roof half open for another week (after 3 days was my birthday and I went to celebrate it to Tallinn, Estonia). 

Replacing Roof - Part 2: Beam Leveling & Crosswind sheet

15 February, 2016 | Home Remodeling | 6 seen

It was second day morning when we re-started works on roof replacing. If you haven't already red, read Part 1: Removing Old Roof.

The idea was simple - if we are going to replace roofing, we will follow latest trends, and one of them involves using a crosswind sheet, which protects both against wind and humidity, I bought some super expensive crosswind sheet for about EUR 200 to cover in total about 180m2. 

Since we were replacing roofing by parts today we had to drag a crosswind beam over leveled beams and add lathing.

Measuring crosswind sheet

Yup, the surrounding views are amazing

Leveled beams

As you can see, its just one fourth of total work done yet (not speaking of actually covering a new roofing)

Beams and laths covered with sheet to protect against rain

For some reason, that Summer was pretty rainy

Lathing stretching over roof edge

We will use a chain saw to saw them in right distance from the edges.

Crosswind sheet and new lathing

Old and New: Roof replacement works

So that''s how looked second day from roof replacement works. We took a rest for next few days and re-started works fresh. Make sure you subscribe to newsletter bellow, not to miss important updates.

How Valentine's day was celebrated in Tbilisi

14 February, 2016 | | 62 seen

We were of to Tbilisi streets looking for Valentine's day photography, when I concluded - Valentine's day, thus not popular in Republic of Georgia, makes some good for local economy - first of all for local flower markets, second for cafes, bars, pubs and restaurants. 

We made a dozen of photos today, experimented with black and white, panorama and other photography techniques. Tbilisi didn't seemed too busy on celebrating Valentine's day, but we found some interesting scenes in Old Town and local flower market. 

This is how we saw Valentine's day was celebrated in Tbilisi, 2016, Piece of Life after all.

Happy Valentine's day in shop windows

Where is she?

Children playground near flower market in Tbilisi

Multi color roses

There is no age for love

For my only one

Love is like a nectar

Do Not Scold Me, My Darling 

Valentine's day cakes in Tbilisi

Colors of life

Happy Valentine's day

As on first date

Postcards from Rabati Fortress

14 February, 2016 | | 9 seen

I first visited Rabati Fortress in Akhaltsikhe, Republic of Georgia, in Summer of 2014, during a two day rafting drive on river Mtkavri, next time we booked a lovely hotel inside fortress complex at the start of 2015, during our stay here I created a lot of pictures and crafted an article about Rabati fortress Castle featuring 48 pictures. (You think its a lot? I have an article from Keukenhof's tulip garden in the Netherlands with 136 images).

At the end of 2015 we visited this site for the third time, I was armored with a DSRL camera, tripod and knowledge of taking HDR pictures.

Rabati fortress complex in Georgia

The above image gained some popularity on Flickr, and after all ended as my Photo of the month  - December, 2015

Rabati fortress complex

Rabati fortress complex

Samikitno / Machakhela Restaurant review (Meidan square, Tbilisi)

14 February, 2016 | Restaurant reviews | 169 seen

Samiktno / Machakhela is a restaurant chain located in Tbilisi, Republic of Georga. One of it's prominent restaurants is located at Meidan Square, just in the heart of Tbilisi Old Town offering breathtaking views towards Metekehi church (in front of which is located Vahtang Gorgasali statue).

This is one of the rare places in Georgia where you can get combos

We are proud, that we were among the first to bring to Georgian market so-called ”combos”.  That is, combined portion dishes which are intended for one person and differ from the practice of delivering dishes to traditional Georgian feast, where food is shared by all members of the table. I would like to say, that the above-mentioned combos are very popular not only among local population, but among those numerous guests who come to our country.   

I have been heading here for dozens of times, in today's photo article I'll share some pictures I did here in frames of Piece of Life photo shooting: Tbilisi - Winter Fairyland

Menu at this restaurant

Written in three languages - Georgian, English and Russian. This time we opted for some breakfast menu.

Views towards Metekhi church

Hmm.. I keep wondering, how one can climb up there (I have never been atop of that cliff, probably it is a great reason to try in near future). See Tourist attractions

Restaurants interior 

Samikitno is distinguished with typical Tbilisian interior and all its restaurants are decorated with reproductions of Georgian painter Niko Pirosmani works.

European style breakfast menu

Yeah, nothing unseen here, best comes with very low price, just 5.5 Lari

Georgian style breakfast menu

Now, this is more interesting, The food is called Gomi, which consists from rice porridge in which Georgian Sulguni cheese is stacked + fried chicken leg. I have tried this just once - and actually it tastes damned good. 

I Love Tbilisi sign at restaurant

The bottom line

This is a good, tourist friendly place, serving Georgian style food in European way. If you are looking for authentic Georgian cuisine, you will find it very softened here

Postcards from Venice, Italy

13 February, 2016 | | 9 seen

We went to Venice on New Year's Eve (2015/2016), for me as a beginner photographer it was a great challenge to photograph here. I prepared well (brought tripod and practiced a lot previously) but I made a huge mistake this night, I messed up with the clock (Flying from country to country is a mess with time, so I have stopped to look in watch when traveling), so we went out for a New Years fireworks one hour earlier. This extra hour resulted in a very cold and unpleasant weather and in aftermath we just got sick. 

Venice in fact didn't seemed very tourist friendly place, when we arrived here from Florence, the huge surprise we learnt was with getting actually a parking space in the city on water. After some hour or even more waiting in a queue we finally parked our rental car at one of the multi storey car parks, and went to our hotel deeper in the city. Hotel room was cold and ...  yeah, not the best travel experience here, but back to the postcards - I promised I will send a postcard from Venice to my grandmother, in fact I didn't sent, so I will most probably print best ones from our Italy trip and hand deliver them to my granny, but meanwhile - Virtual Postcards from Venice in Italy

Water canal in Venice

Venice is sited on a group of 118 small islands separated by canals and linked by bridges.

Venice, Italy

Venice is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture, and its artwork. The city in its entirety is listed as a World Heritage Site, along with its lagoon.

January 1st, 2016 in Venice

Paddlers on Venice canal

View towards Venice from multi storey car parking lot

And off we were... heading to Verona next.

Postcards from Florence, Italy

13 February, 2016 | | 5 seen

Florence is a destination to head for if you are looking for renaissance art. 

Florence is famous for its history: a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time, it is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages"

In today's Piece of Life photo series - Postcards from Florence, taken at the end of 2015

View towards Florence

If you are new to Florence and might wonder where are the best points to photography the city, get to the Michelangelo Square, from this place all Florence is on your palm. I installed a tripod here and played a bit with camera here - above image is final HDR I rendered using Photomatix.

Panoramic view towards Florence

Some magic with photo stitching and in result - lovely panoramic view of Florence.

Next we headed by our rental car straight into the heart a city, parked our car near a cathedral and went in a few hour wandering tour around Florence

Mime in the streets of Florence

Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence

Turns out the Michelangelo is buried in Santa Croce, and also the Rossini, Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei and who was tried by the Inquisition and was not allowed Christian burial until 1737, after 95 years of thanaato. There is also a monument to Dante, but the sarcophagus is empty. 

The Basilica di Santa Croce (Basilica of the Holy Cross) is the principal Franciscan church in Florence, Italy, and a minor basilica of the Roman Catholic Church. It is situated on the Piazza di Santa Croce, about 800 metres south-east of the Duomo. The site, when first chosen, was in marshland outside the city walls.

Renaissance sculptures in Florence

Renaissance sculptures in Florence

Florentines

I actually bough a pajama at that H&M store seen in the background (above image)

A chariot 

Mime posing for a shot in Florence

Sergos Duqani restaurant in Akhaltsikhe

12 February, 2016 | Restaurant reviews | 23 seen

Sergos Duqani is a lovely restaurant in Akhaltsikhe, serving traditional Georgian cuisine. Located just in the footsteps of Rabati Fortress complex.

We first discovered and met lovely owners of this place, when stayed in hotel in Rabati (Hotel Rabath & Gino Wellness) and were looking for some local place to have dinner. Frankly speaking sashlik served here is among the best I have ever tried in Georgia (and price for them are ridiculously low  - about 6 lari per skewer.)

Segos Duqani restaurant in Akhaltsikhe, Georgia

Menu items at Sergo Duqani restaurant 

Inside interior 

Turkish coffee

Soup Ostri

Sashlik on grill

Sashlik on plate

How to Prepare Traditional Dolma (Grape Leaves Roll)

12 February, 2016 | Food blogger | 9 seen

Hello everyone and welcome to another post from my experiments being a food blogger. OK, for following recipe I wasn't actually preparing that tasty dolma, instead I experiment with new food photography technique.

About food photography: Today I decided to experiment with 100mm lens and used long exposures (obliviously from a tripod). Find more tutorials on Digital Photography School

About Dolma (Grape leaves roll) - Dolma is a family of stuffed vegetable dishes common in the Middle East and surrounding regions including the Balkans, the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia. Common vegetables to stuff include tomato, pepper, onion, zucchini, eggplant, and garlic. The stuffing may or may not include meat. Meat dolmas are generally served warm, often with egg-lemon or garlic yogurt sauce; meatless ones are generally served cold. Stuffed vegetables are also common in Italian cuisine, where they are named ripieni ("stuffed").

Today we are going to prepare traditional dolma with meat stuffing. Most of the ingredients will be available at your closest shop, but for grape leaves and yogurt you might need to head to specific store (which we actually did, here in Georgia, we bought leaves and yogurt (for dressing) at Turkish store in Didube (neighborhood of Tbilisi)

Stuffing for dolmas

onions, garlic, species (on your taste), rise (not fully boiled), carrots, minced mix meat( lamb and pork)

Grape leaves

Yogurt sauce with garlic

Now its time to put stuffing in grape leaves, wrap them up and put in the pot.

Wrapped dolma rolls in pot

Pour some water over dolmas (about 3cm above) and cook slowly for some 45 minutes

Cook slowly

It is a good idea to add some pressure over dolmas, so they don't destruct

Dolmas dressed with garlic yogurt sauce

DrupalGap Native App - Part 2: Creating And Linking Custom Views Listing Page

11 February, 2016 | Drupal Development | 6 seen

I was working on my blog's native Drupal app, and decided to share my discoveries on how to create additional custom Views Json listing page and how to link it in  your apps menu.

For the content on this page I decided to list all articles from my blog whose location are set to Georgia, and give it name - Georgia Travel Guide. Georgia and Drupal is special for me, so this was just logically the most "urgent" task I wanted to achieve next while building my native Drupal app.

Read more: How to develop Native Drupal app using Drupalgap - Part 1: Custom Front Page Using views - Images and Date

DrupalGap app in Ripple Emulator

Creating Views Json 

I have some specific fields for my content types, most probably they will differ from your setup, use with caution

• Create new view - I named it Sakartvelo (Name of Georgia in Georgian language)
• Path: sakartvelo
• Format: Json data document
• Fields: Title, Images, Nid, Post date, Total views
• Filter criteria: Location:Georgia
• Sort criteria: Total views desc

I wanted to add additional exposed filer to allow visitors change categories, but seems DrupalGap is net yet compatible with views selective filters.

Here is Json data output for my view

Creating Custom Page (Module)

In apps/modules/custom create new directory - Georgia, place inside it a .js file georgia.js

Next add path to your module in settings.js file

How to add menu link in DrupalGap

​

DrupalGap menu

I just replaced existing links from Main Menu in settings.js file

What's next?

Hopefully I will finish my development works on my native Drupal app anytime soon, from now the next big thing I'm planing to touch in DrupalGap is the way it renders taxonomy pages. I will keep you updated

How to develop Native Drupal app using Drupalgap - Part 1: Custom Front Page Using views - Images and Date

11 February, 2016 | Drupal Development | 12 seen

There was a time when I was really eager to develop native Drupal app, back then I decided to stick with Drupalgap. Now, more than a year has already passed since, and I haven't achieved my goal (s) yet.

Until recently, I decided to finish works on native Drupal app I started back in 2014. Speaking of my app -  nothing fancy here, just my latest blog posts, with ability latter to extend functionality adding more native app features (geo location, for example) . As I like to call it - minimum viable product approach.

I installed DrupalGap module and all its dependencies on my site, I must admit I had some problems actually getting it alive, but they were more server related rather problems with module itself. In short I experienced problems with server permissions to upload files, so I had to install DrupalGap library manually (instead of a one click installation), and then turned out that DrupalGap is not very friendly with php 5.2. version, so I had to patch it a little bit.

Ok, when I was setup and mobile-application folder was created on my server, I straight went to explore how to get a front page for my app listing latest articles with images and date, and here is how I achieved it:

Custom front page for Native Drupal app using DrupalGap

For most of the documentation I followed on DrupalGap Docs. Almost all from written bellow is taken from DrupalGap documentation: Article Titles with Images and Image Lists. I modified a little bit views and .js file to achieve results I was looking for. It took me several hours to get this done, and hopefully I can spare you some time. For previewing my app online I installed Ripple Emulator (Google Chrome Extension) and disabled Cross Domain Proxy

App preview on Google Chrome Ripple Emulator

​Creating Json Views for DrupalGap

• Create a new view - Article Images
• Set view to Json data document
• Add fields: title, images, nid and post date

Preview your view:

Next create a new custom module in your DrupalGap folder: (How to create custom module in DrupalGap)

• In /app/modules/custom (you will have to create those directories as well) I created a new folder - front, in which I created new .js file front.js.

What I did in this file:

First - I setup display format to none, so I can apply my own custom CSS, instead of using ul li elements, then I added date field and finally applied some custom CSS classes for wrapping results page, here are the CSS styles for them, I added them to drupalgap.css file (but you should probably add them to your theme css file). N.B. CSS styles in this example are not perfect, you should use them just as a reference. 

Make changes in settings.js file

• Add Drupal.modules.custom['front'] = {}; 
• Change front page drupalgap.settings.front = 'front';

What's next?

I hope this is a good starting point if you are struggling finding out how to theme your custom frontpage in DrupalGap. Speaking of me - I will fine tune this app to make it look better, and hopefully will move to the stage two - actually finishing it and publishing online. I will keep you updated.

How to take and create HDR Panoramic photos

10 February, 2016 | Digital Photography School | 11 seen

In today's digital photography school tutorial series I'll show how to create HDR panoramic photos.

Make sure you check my previous tutorials on HDR photography - How To Take and Post-Process Night HDR Images , How to Capture and Post-Process Professional HDR Photos Using HDR Efex PRO

Now, regarding panorama photos, there is not always a need to create a 180 or 360 degree panoramas, sometimes you just want to fit in your frame a little bit more than a regular shot can do, then comes in panorama technique. 

HDR panorama photography

Shooting mode

A sturdy tripod is must have, also a DSRL camera is preferable. Check out: Top 13 Best digital SLR cameras of 2016 for beginners

Install your camera on a tripod, and shoot it portrait mode. Settings for camera - Manual mode, f11, ISO 100, bracketing 3 frames, timer 2 seconds. Rotate your tripod head after each bracketed shot for about 15-20 degrees.

I will shoot in JPEG mode

Post Processing

You will need to have Photomatix, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom

Let's start with importing our scene from camera to PC. I will not use default Adobe Lightroom wizard, instead I will save all images on HDD (If you are shooting in RAW mode, you will be required to use that one extra step with Lightroom)

Create a new folder on your desktop - I will call it HDR Panorama, and copy images from your memory card containing images from your scene in that folder

Folder structure for HDR panorama

Now open Photomatix and choose Batch Bracketed Photos

Batch bracketed photos in Photomatix

Now from select folder choose folder you just stored images from your camera, as well I will leave default for presets, and press Run button

Batch processing in Photomatix

It might take a while to align your images in final you should seen a screen like this:

Batch results

You are done with Photomatix now, now it's time to import exported batch results in Adobe Lightroom

HDR images imported in Adobe Lightroom

I will not apply any customizations yet, I will use Adobe Lightroom at this stage just to export (convert and resize) my images, so I can import them to Adobe Photoshop and perform a photomerge.

Select all your images and click on Export from File menu or just press CTRL+Shift+E

From file settings I'll change image format to PSD and will apply image sizing to resize to fit 1024 pixels

Adobe Lightroom export settings

The real magic starts now - it is time to open Adobe Photoshop and do a photo merge from File - > Automate - > Photomerge

Adobe Photoshop photomerge settings

Select psd files you just exported with Lightroom, in most cases I will go with Cylindrical settings, press OK and let the magic happen

It might take a wile to Adobe to generate tour scene, but in a result you should have your HDR panorama generated like this

HDR panorama in Adobe PS

Now, merge all layers and save your scene as TIFF image.

Now once more open Adobe Lightroom and import TIFF image you just saved from Photoshop

Apply some cropping and fine tune your image (whites, blacks), but since we did already a HDR, there is actually not much need to apply some fine tuning, you are ready to export your final HDR image

Crop panorama in Adobe Lightroom

Now export your final image and you are done. 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, if so, please drop a comment or just say hi, I would love to hear from you back.