Tumanishvili Theater Cafe in Tbilisi

8 December, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 12 seen

Some people visits theater to watch spectacles, some people visits to theater to enjoy a cup of coffee at theaters' buffet. That's exactly what happened to us in late November Sunday afternoon. After wandering around David Aghmeneshabeli avenue we headed here to enjoy cup of latte and try some sweets.

Entrance at Tumanishvili theater

You probably have noticed this lovely sculpture if wandered in this neighborhood - now you now - there is a lovely cafe inside and of course the Tumanishvili theater

Artistic interior 

There are few elements I really like here and would like to implement something from above scene in our rural house. The round dinning table is a must have.

Wide selection of alcoholic beverages 

Glass of good brandy / cognac perhaps is a good idea after or before spectacle. Although I prefer coffee and cola.

Posters and paintings

The bottom line

Tumanashvili's cafe seems a nice place where to enjoy a cup of coffee or try some sweets. Prices are pretty well above average in city. For two lattes, bottle of Coca Cola and a tiramisu cake we paid 17 Lari. Thus interior is very well done. Good place.

Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi

6 December, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 106 seen

You have probably noticed Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi if wandered around Abanotubani district - it's the one you can see up in the hill left from Narikala. The idea to visit this site arrived for me when some of the Georgia Expat Photographer club members posted a picture of this church.

I believe you can climb up here and have a lovely and a very spectacular hiking trip doing that, but for this time we opted for a more convenient way - a taxi. We took a regular street taxi and he took us up here, agreed to wait for 30 minutes while I will take photography here, and the took us back to the city for 20 Lari. 

And this is actually the way I suggest to you for getting here if you aren't familiar with area.

Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi

Tabor Monastery of the Transformation in Tbilisi

In the background you can see Tbilisi TV tower (on the top left) and almost all city of Tbilisi. 

Jesus Christ on the cross

Altar inside church

As I learned later this church has been built just recently (2012), some construction works still are performed here.

On 7th September 2012 the monastery was founded on Tabor mount. The project is not complete yet, but building of church is finished. Source: TABOR MONASTERY OF THE TRANSFORMATION (TBILISI)

Spectacular view to the Narikala Fortress

The Bottom line

I have probably just found a new place for awesome Tbilisi landscape photography. I'm interested to return here most probably in Summer when a lot of light is available for super cool photographs..

Painting Floor - Final Touch For Maximum Effect (Second Paint Layer)

5 December, 2015 | Home Remodeling | 1 seen

Right, we have arrived to the second post in my painting floor adventures from home remodeling series. Today I will show you how after adding second paint layer to our rural house's paint we achieved the maximum effect.

Paint work was performed at the start of July, 2015

Make sure you read other posts in our adventurous efforts of remodeling an old country house.

Floor ready for second layer of paint

Read more how I prepared this floor and applied base layer of paint here:

Floor waiting for a new layer of paint

As you can see in the background - it is a kitchen starting to get already a decent look

Applying second layer of paint

Wow,that's a dramatic makeover

Painted floor

Looks much better. Now our new temporary bedroom is almost ready, it's time to put in some furniture, finish kitchen works and start thinking of changing a leaky roof.

Wanderings In The Tbilisi Old Town (HDR Efex Pro)

4 December, 2015 | Digital Photography School | 14 seen

It was day 62 from my 365 photo challenge project and I felt I'm out of good photography locations. For couple of the last days I have been doing nice landscape photography in close to me locations, and it seemed that I'm out of options. I asked a friend (photographer) and asked could he give me some advice. He advised me to make a list with items to photograph, like birds, macro's e.t.c.

Still I felt I need to continue improving my landscape photography. Then another person asked have I tried HDR Effect PRO (For HDR photography I have been using just Photomatix) - my answer was no. 

And here did came the inspiration - I decided to head to the lovely Abanatobuani district in Tbilisi Old town and make some cool looking HDR's with public bath houses and hopefully some sun in the background.

I downloaded trial version of HDR Effect pro, took a tripod, fully charged battery and my Canon DSLR camera. Latter when doing post processing I was impressed of dramatic effect HDR Effect Pro created:

Abanotubani district in Tbilisi

That's a nice looking HDR actually. Make sure you are exposing property when doing bracketing. I did a few tests with over and under exposed images and latter found that any basic rules applies to HDR as well. Make sure you are exposing properly.

Public bath houses, colorful balconies and Narikala fortress on top

I have found that HDR's works good when shot in outdoor locations and includes a sky.

Abanotubani

One of my favorite shots - and here is why - I already knew what kind of result I'm looking for even before I left my apartment for this photography session. I feel it's important to plan your scene even before you have arrived on site.

Tbilisi Old Town

Wood carved balconies in Tbilisi

One of the reasons tourist fell in love with Tbilisi  - the wooden balconies.

In overall this was a good photography session, I had a chance to apply my recently developed skills and I found a new inspiration for coming photo project days. Speaking of Digital Photography School project I'm planing to write some guides on how to: take a HDR image; Edit HDR in Photomatix; Edit in HDR Effects Pro.

Now, I will be glad if you will follow my 365 project on Flickr.

About HDR Effects Pro 2

• Powerful controls help you create exceptional natural and artistic HDR photos as HDR Efex Pro gives you a wide range of options for any image.
• Bring back lost highlights, open up shadows, and adjust tonality to achieve the perfectly natural and balanced image you’ve envisioned.
• A unique combination of one-click presets helps you start off on the right foot. Pick a style that excites you, then adjust the details to make the look your own.

Try Trial (15 days) or Buy here: HDR Efex Pro

Sachebureke Abanotubanshi (Cheburek Cafe on Abanotubani)

3 December, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 52 seen

The other day we were just wandering around Tbilisi sulphur bath (Abanotubani) district doing some cool photography of probably most popular tourist spot in Tbilisi - Abanotubani district. During our wanderings we noticed small doors with title - Cheburek Cafe and decided to return to this place once photography session will be ended.

Cheburek Cafe is located on Grishashvili street 8, Tbilisi

Those of you who don't know what a Cheburek is, here is a good explanation from Wikipedia - Chiburekki is a deep-fried turnover with a filling of ground or minced meat and onions. It is made with a single round piece of dough folded over the filling in a half-moon shape. A national dish of the Crimean Tatars and traditional for the Caucasian and Turkic peoples, it is also popular as snack and street food throughout Transcaucasia, Central Asia, Russia,Ukraine, as well as with the Crimean Tatar diasporas in Turkey and Romania.

Cheburek is one of my favorite street foods and I was interested to learn more what kind of chebureki they serve at this place - for surprise of me - they have dozen of varieties for chebureki. We got lucky enough and a Russian speaking lady (who later turned out was an owner of this place and in fact were from Belarus) served us and gave me a very good lesson on what's real cheburek, because for me a real cheburek associates with my childhood memories from Riga Central Railway station.

Let's be honest - chebureki is a street food. But who has told that it can't be served in restaurant? Chebureki cafe just proved that to me. Best chebureki are in Tbilisi (After Riga Railway station).

Traditional Georgian style interior elements

Soviet style poster art

Very cozy interior at Sachebureke in Tbilisi

At Sachebureke cafe in Tbilisi

Cheburek

Damn, those were one of the best chebureks I have tried

Traditional Georgian Lobiani in pot

Traditional Georgian Lobiani in pot

Entrance doors at Sachebureke in Tbilisi

Menu in Russian

The Bottom Line

Sachebureke cafe in Abanotubani is of of the best of it's kind place where to try really delicious chebureks, here you can get also traditional Georgian Khachapuri's and enjoy tap wine. Prices are very affordable (bellow the average). Highly recommend! We spent about 15 Lari for 3 really delicious chebureks, lobiani in pot and two Turkish coffee's. 

Learn more on Sachebureke Abanotubanshi Facebook page

Fresh Vegetable Market Near Gori Highway

2 December, 2015 | Shopping Venues | 7 seen

I once had a friend visiting me from Canada, he was pretty much obsessed with eco friendly foods, I took him to the local Tbilisi Dezerter bazaar and told - hey look there are plenty of eco foods here. He took some carrot from local salesman and answered me - this probably is natural, but it's not eco!

Believe me or not - but my friend was right, I understood that immediately. If you just like my friend are into eco thing - you wont probably find eco friendly food near Gori Highway (connecting Tbilisi with Batumi) some 60 km from nations capital. On the other hand if natural is OK then you can buy fresh vegetables here for sure.

In fact this is what we actually did after returning from a day trip from Borjomi - we bought a box with tomatoes (about 10kg) to latter prepare tomatoes in jelly (Check out my food blogger series not to miss an update on that)

Tomatoes for sale near Gori highway in Republic of Georgia

Negotiating a deal with local farmers

The thing I love in Georgia - you can always bargain about the price, so we bought a box of tomatoes for about 10 lari, instead of 17 lari. Depending how good negotiator you are - you should try.

Apples for sale at highway market

Depending on season you will find many fresh vegetables and fruits

Fresh vegetable market near Gori highway

The Bottom Line

If you are traveling by your own vehicle Tbilisi - Batumi route, take your chance and buy some goodies at this market

Borjomi Cafe 1+2

1 December, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 12 seen

If you are looking for a decent cafeteria in Borjomi I can recommend one - Borjomi Cafe 1+2 located close to the entrance of Borjomi park. I paid a visit here and tried different dishes in the middle of September 2015.

Borjomi cafe 1+2

This cafe is located just next to the entrance in Borjomi Park.

Borjomi cafe 1+2

Lovely interior at Cafe 1+2 in Borjomi

Khachapuri and Salads 

The bottom line

Although the prices here are about the average, taking into account it's good location and good service this is a place I can recomend once in Borjomi

Motsameta Monastery near Kutaisi in Georgia

30 November, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 111 seen

Motsameta monastery is one of the most spectacular sites I have visited while being living in Georgia. To get here yo will need either to own your vehicle or hire a taxi, probably there are organized tours as well heading to Motsameta monastery.

I first visited this site in Spring 2015, unfortunately it was already a night and I didn't see much nor photographed anything decent here, the next time I visited Motsameta was in Autumn 2015, together with my mom, this time I was better prepared and it was a day.

Rail tracks near Motsameta monastery

There is actually a train making a stop in front of the entrance at Motsameta monastery, the Train is connecting Kutaisi and Tkibuli

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Forest surrounding Motsameta monastery

From the main entrance you must go some additional 500 meters to actually reach monastery complex. As you go you are pampered with spectacular views like forest seen in above image

Motsameta monastery

And then you will notice a fragment from a fairy tail - Motsameta monastery standing still at the end of he cliff.

Valley surrounding Motsameta monastery

I'm not sure is it a valley or a canyon, but view are just spectacular

Gorge on Tskatsitela river near Motsameta monastery

Rear view of Motsameta monastery complex

This site looks more like a very well fortified fortress instead of a religious place. 

Entrance gates at Motsameta monastery 

Motsameta monastery

Cupola inside the church building

Visitors at Motsameta monastery complex

Plants at Motsameta monastery

Cliffs near Motsameta monastery

Rocks near Motsameta monastery

About Motsameta monastery

Motsameta Monastery is smaller and quieter than the one in Gelati, although its cliff-edge setting is more spectacular by far. It is located 6km out of Kutaisi, off the Gelati road. Take the turning marked by a photo of the church and follow this track for a couple of kilometres. This little monastery has a spectacular setting on a cliff-top promontory above a bend of the Tskhaltsitela River. Situated dizzily high above the ravine of the Tskhaltsitela River, the monastery offers awe-inspiring views of the river and the surrounding countryside from any number of buildings and points on the grounds. Extremely isolated and seldom visited by tourists, this place will give you an unadulterated taste of the monastic life.

The church itself is on a site on which there had been a church and village since the fourth century. The name Motsameta is derived from the Georgian word for martyrdom. Two brothers, David and Constantine Mkheidze, were lords of this region in the eighth century. Sometime between 720 and 730, succumbing to a superior Arab force, they were captured and tortured for refusing to convert to Islam. They were thrown into the Rioni River with stones tied around their necks and their bodies washed up on the riverbank below the monastery. They were buried as martyrs in the crypt of the church, which was also destroyed by the Arabs at the time of the brothers' death.

Water Reflections on Lisi Lake

29 November, 2015 | | 7 seen

She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city. - Roman Payne, The Wanderess

Spectacular water reflection photography done in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia on Lisi Lake.​

Water reflections on Lisi lake in Tbilisi

A perfect harmony water reflection

Mountain reflection on water

Boat deck reflection on water

Building reflection on water

Ducks

Cost of Living in Tbilisi (Republic of Georgia)

28 November, 2015 | Living in Georgia | 58 seen

This post is a result of an experiment I performed for one month in October 2015, I counted my everyday expenses and summed it up to see how much actually it costs to live in Georgia. This information might be useful if you are planing to move to Georgia or just to compare how your country stands to Georgia.

For tracking my (our) everyday expenses I installed Expense Manager Android app on my phone and entered spending just after purchases. 

Total expenses in October 2015

In October in total we spent GEL 4,385 which equals to $1,823 or EUR 1,708 (according to exchange rates on November 20,2015)

Now to clarify the results for this experiment I must mention that bellow listed expenses are for family of two + two cats.

Lets start with numbers:

Renting an apartment in Tbilisi - GEL 990 ($411.00 / EUR 385.00)

We have a nice two bedroom apartment in almost city center (it's not Old Town, but still very good neighborhood). Apartments in Tbilisi are pretty affordable, you can get a decent apartment, equipped with fridge, washing machine and other home appliance for about $400 per month. Price may go up, and can be lower - depending on your needs and location. Actually the price we negotiated for our rent was $400 but due to Georgian National Currency fluctuations we paid even more). That happens time on time.

Utilities - GEL 65.15 ($27.09 / EUR 25.37)

Electricity, Internet, water and gas. Now for heating our apartment we are using a gas. In summer months you won't spend much on it, but in wintertime some 100 GEL is optional additional expenses for your budget if you want to live in a warm place. Internet  - you can have some basic internet packages starting some 10 GEL per month. We are spending about 35 GEL for 30 MB/s internet. Electricity - if I remember correct the tariff is about 0.17 GEL per kWh. We had paid in advance for gas, so we didn't spent a tetri this month on it, we started to heat our apartment in middle of October.

Transport - GEL 353.60 ($147.03 / EUR 137.71)

We don't own our car and for getting around in the city or country we are using taxi's, marshrutka's or hire a private driver (for longer trips). Public transport in Tbilisi is cheap - costs 0.5 GEL per ride, while a taxi on average will take you some 5 GEL per ride. Private driver starting 100 GEL per day. My mom arrived to visit me via Kutaisi, so I spent extra on getting to Kutaisi and back using a private car with a driver. Though you can cut down your expenses for traveling between Kutaisi and Tbilisi using Georgian Bus.

Thanks to the private driver I had a chance to visit sites I wouldn't reach other way, during my trip to Kutaisi, we visited Bagrati cathedral, Gelati monastery, Motsameta monastery, spent some money on cool local restaurant Dzveli Gelati, visited Prometheus cave and even took a boat ride there. 

We had an other tour in region of Kakheti this October, we visited sites like Gremi, Nekresi, Telavi and other.

Basically if you don't own a private car and would love to see the country that's the way of doing that - hiring a private driver. If you are looking for one now - here is an article about my private driver Vazha.

Food - GEL 1885.68 ($784.10 / EUR 733.86)

The biggest surprise for me was to discover that we are spending about 43% of our money on food. The most surprising is that we spent about GEL 1000 eating out while "just" about GEL 880 on groceries to be prepared home. We are doing like weekly shopping at local Carefour store. Spending a thousand lari on restaurants is a lot, on the other hand I feel I'm super educated both on Georgian cuisine and know some of the best Tbilisi restaurants.

Although it might looks as an cheap option to eat out in Tbilisi, if you are planing to do it everyday you might end with a hole in your budget. After seeing our total expenses on food for October month, we decided to avoid any restaurants in November instead of spending additional money on groceries to cook at home (this is good for my Food Blogger series)

Entertainment - GEL 438.19 ($182.21 / EUR 170.53)

Usually we are not spending much on Entertainment in Georgia, if you don't count restaurants as an entertainment (sometimes I got this feeling there is actually nothing much to do, than just to spend your days in some of the Tbilisi restaurants). Though in October we bought ticket to two fantastic concerts - Diana Krall visited Tbilisi and The Tiger Lillies performed in Tbilisi. We went to one additional theater performance during October. I would say it was enough cultural experience during October.

Healthcare - GEL 213.96 ($88.97 / EUR 83.27)

Not every month you will spend money on visiting doctors or buying meds, but you should consider this as well. For this month spending nothing serious, couple of doctor visits and a knee treatment for my mom plus some meds.

The Bottom Line

For a good life in Tbilisi you should expect to spend about $1000-$2000 per month.

There are many factors which will help to reduce or even increase your spending if you will opt to live here. My suggestion  - avoid eating too much at local restaurants, instead spend that money on better things - like cooking home for example.

Are you an expat living in Tbilisi or Georgia? Share your thought on cost of living in Tbilisi. My readers and I would love to hear.

Simple Aspic (Meat Jelly, Kholodets) Recipe

27 November, 2015 | Food blogger | 99 seen

In today's food blogger's series I will show how to prepare a really tasty and delicious homemade aspic out of pig's trotters.

I'm not sure how popular an aspic is in the Western world, but it is a super popular in post Soviet countries, and is served in every fiests. Russian have a name for it - a kholodets (Холодец).According to Wikipedia - Aspic is a dish in which ingredients are set into a gelatin made from a meat stock or consommé. Non-savory dishes, often made with commercial gelatin mixes without stock or consommé, are usually called gelatin salads. Nearly any type of meat can be used to make the gelatin: pork, beef, veal, chicken, turkey, or fish. The aspic may need additional gelatin in order to set properly. Veal stock provides a great deal of gelatin; in making stock, veal is often included with other meat for that reason. Fish consommés usually have too little natural gelatin, so the fish stock may be double-cooked or supplemented. Since fish gelatin melts at a lower temperature than gelatins of other meats, fish aspic is more delicate and melts more readily in the mouth.

In today's post I will show how to make an aspic from pig trotters. 

Ingredients you will need - a few pig's trotters for meat, you can get some at your local market or shop, and gelatin. A gelatin is a super cool ingredient every food blogger should have in their arsenal, you can make a super cool jelly's with help of it.

The process for preparing an aspic is really simple - first boil pig trotter's as long as the meat is soft enough it's easy to remove meat from trotter's skin, give it a time to cool down, then start removing meat (take only meat, no need for skin, thus some adds skin to aspic as well)

Use your hands to slice meat in smaller pieces and place it in container

Place meat in plastic containers

It really doesn't matter what container you are using, it can be glass ofcourse, or it can be container with some texture on it, making more appealing visuals at the end.

Cover meat with gelatin 

Now for this aspic we used a fabricated gelatin. 

Put aspic in fridge or in cool place and leave it like for a night (or at least a few hours) next day you will have a really firm and tasty aspic.

Homemade aspic (meat jelly)

I hope you enjoyed this simple aspic recipe, please make sure you subscribe to my monthly newsletter (sing up bellow) and don't forget to leave a comment.

Third Traffic Spike: More than 7,500 Daily Users

26 November, 2015 | Servers | 6 seen

A huge traffic surge to this website was experienced on November 15 when total unique user count reached 7,732. The vast majority of them were coming from Turkey. 

Update: Learn how I got 10,000 Page views in a day

This was already third traffic spike to my blog, previous record was set back in January (2015) with 3,584 users. While the first serious traffic spike my blog experienced almost two years ago, when total daily traffic surged just above 1,000 daily users. For the couple of last months this is actually a daily traffic norm to my blog - well above 1,000 daily users every day, though the first traffic spike seemed very impressive for me.

Does 7,500 daily users impress me today? Yes, of course, though the excitement is not so huge as it was first time. Anyway 7,500 is a pretty decent number, so there is a reason to cover article on them.

I believe there will be some who are going to smile about such results, I mean those of you who are receiving traffic more than 10,000 unique visitors per day, but for me - well, it is still a great achievement. Best so far! Best of it, my hosting provider Linode handled this surge with ease. I'm glad for that, because of money paid to Linode is pretty high - about $60 per month. 

If you are just starting out and are not expecting huge traffic spikes, you don't have to pay such high fees I'm paying. You can get started with Bluehost shared hosting as low as $3.95/mo

Traffic spike, more than 7,500 users a day

So here are the log files from my Linode manager:

Linode Network

A huge spike in outgoing network reported here

Linode CPU

Nothing unusual on CPU usage as well, got about 25% CPU usage on November 15. As you can see from above graph just few days before CPU rate were higher, actually I experienced some problems with my Drupal site and after that CPU surge fine tuned some things (removed unused modules e.t.c).

The only thing I noticed on my Linode VPS - increase in outgoing network traffic.

This leads me to think that with my existing server configuration I could go up to 100,000 monthly visitors without headaches, in fact I would say that existing configuration could handle about 250,000 monthly users (without spikes and surges). 

What made such traffic spike?

I July I created an article on minimum wages in European Union 2015. I believe this article got shared on Turkey's Facebook profiles and got a lot of attention. Why I'm saying "I believe"? Because I don't know for sure. Google Analytics reported this traffic as direct traffic. Since I don't believe there were more than 7,000 users in one day who would enter my blog's address directly in their browsers I did a Google Search and learnt that in Turkey traffic is might be intercepted. Google’s Public DNS intercepted in Turkey

Acquisition sources

Traffic by country

In Conclusion (Waiting for fourth traffic spike)

Traffic spikes come and go, I'm not focusing on traffic spikes, I'm more interested in steady (predictable) traffic growth. One thing is common for traffic spikes, they might come a a surprise (as it happened this time and did happened all previous times).

One thing you should pay attention is your hosting plan, either you sit on a shared hosting or have your VPS, investigate how much traffic it can handle. Speaking of me - I believe my existing server configuration could handle up to 20,000 unique visitors in a day (of course, time will show)

How to add MailChimp Signup Form for Drupal

25 November, 2015 | Drupal Development | 15 seen

After being blogging for more than two years already and finally reached about 40,000 monthly unique visitors to my blog I decided it's time to set up an email newsletter. I knew there are some Drupal modules already, but I ended with a very simple solution not involving any of them (modules).

I have been using MailChimp in past to deliver email newsletters and I believe MailChimp is one of the best in the market. They offer free account for up to 2000 subscribers list. Perfectly what I need. Since I'm building my list from scratch I believe it will take a long time to get over 2000 subscribers.

MailChimp Lists

I created a new list, gave it a self explaining name and next looked for embedded code so I can embed a signup form on my Drupal site using blocks.

MailChimp Signup forms

Embedded forms works best if you are looking to display a signup form bellow your articles or in page sidebar.

You will have few options to customize your signup form and you will be provided with embed code to add to your Drupal website. After adding a few CSS lines to sites style sheet I ended up with following signup form for my blog.

Signup form

I didn't invented anything new here, for inspiration I used a design and text for signup form on other cool blogger website: www.truevallhala.com

Now, feel free to join my monthly newsletter by subscribing bellow. 

Honestly speaking I have no idea how good or bad this signup form will perform (collect emails), but if I could collect about 500 mails in a year, that would be probably a good result. So far I have 2 subscribers - me and the other one, who subscribed while I was implementing this signup form.

Postcards from Tbilisi

24 November, 2015 | | 8 seen

Tbilisi is city which have inspired many great poets, writers and of course travelers. Mikhail Lermontov, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy and even Marco Polo have spent some time in Tbilisi.

Who knows maybe the sulfur baths in Abanotubani district has inspired the great poets?!

As for a photographers - Tbilisi is a lovely destination and we have found a lot of inspiration here (This is the place I learned to create a decent night exposure photography).

This time we headed to catch the Golden Hour and ended up with lovely postcard style images from Tbilisi.

Tbilisi - thanks for being a piece of our lives.

David Agmashenebeli street in Tbilisi

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Metekhi church and river Mtkvari

Metekhi church and river Mtkvari in Tbilisi

Tbilisi old town

Tbilisi old town

Tbilisi Old Town and Narikala Fortress

Sioni church in Tbilisi

Postcards from Tbilisi

Vahtang Gorgasali statue and Tbilisi Old town

Monument "Mother Georgia"

Streets of Tbilisi's Old town

Gelati Monastery in Georgia

23 November, 2015 | Churches and Monasteries | 78 seen

Gelati monastery together with Bagrati Cathderal are one of the main sights in this region (Imereti) in Georgia. Although I have been living in Georgia since 2011, first I visited this site just in the Spring 2015 together with my dad, unfortunately it was a late evening already and I was not proficient of taking night photography (now I'm).

The second time I visited Gelati monastery was together with my mom already in Autumn 2015. This time I was prepared much better and instead of just taking photographs here I took HDR images.

Gelati monastery near Kutaisi

Gelati is a monastic complex near Kutaisi, Imereti, western Georgia. It contains the Church of the Virgin founded by the King of Georgia David the Builder in 1106, and the 13th-century churches of St George and St Nicholas.

Bell tower at Gelati monastery

Gelati monastery complex

Arches and burials at Gelati monastery complex

Dome inside Gelati church

Wall paintings at Gelati monastery

Sundial at Gelati monastery

I wouldn't probably even notice this sundial, but some time ago I was contacted by a guy who was found of sundials, and asked me are there some cool places in Georgia where sundials are located. Bach then I did a quick Google search and found that there actually is this cool old wall sun dial located at Gelati Monastery. So here you go.

Academy at Gelati monastery complex

The Gelati Monastery for a long time was one of the main cultural and intellectual centers in Georgia. It had an Academy which employed some of the most celebrated Georgian scientists, theologians and philosophers, many of whom had previously been active at various orthodox monasteries abroad, one of which was the Mangana Monastery in Constantinople. Among the scientists were such celebrated scholars as Ioane Petritsi and Arsen Ikaltoeli.

Sheep and cross at Gelati monastery

About Gelati monastery

Gelati is a monastic complex near Kutaisi, Imereti, western Georgia. It contains the Church of the Virgin founded by the King of Georgia David the Builder in 1106, and the 13th-century churches of St George and St Nicholas.

The Gelati Monastery for a long time was one of the main cultural and intellectual centers in Georgia. It had an Academy which employed some of the most celebrated Georgian scientists, theologians and philosophers, many of whom had previously been active at various orthodox monasteries abroad, one of which was the Mangana Monastery in Constantinople. Among the scientists were such celebrated scholars as Ioane Petritsi and Arsen Ikaltoeli.

Due to the extensive work carried out by the Gelati Academy, people of the time called it "a new Hellas" and "a second Athos".

The Gelati Monastery has preserved a great number of murals and manuscripts dating back to the 12th to 17th centuries. The Khakhuli triptych was enshrined at Gelati until being stolen in 1859.

In Gelati is buried one of the greatest Georgian kings, David the Builder. Near his grave are the gates of Ganja, which were taken as trophies by king Demetrius I in 1138.

In 1994, Gelati Monastery was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. The site was included in the 2008 World Monuments Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites by the World Monuments Fund to draw attention to deterioration caused by prolonged neglect.