Shaurma Club on Tamar Mephe Street (Tbilisi)

8 November, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 18 seen

Shaurma club on Tamar Mephe street in Tbilisi is among one of the best street food places I have tried in Tbilisi and Georgia. They offer really tasty shaurma's, kabab's and they even have a salad bar.

They obey all sanitary norms (work in gloves at least) and the prices are really budget friendly.

If you enjoy street food and love shaurma's you will definitely enjoy Shaurma Club on Tamar Mephe in Tbilisi. Frankly speaking I have been living on this street for the last 2 and a half years, and Shaurma Club is a new boy on our street, prior to that, this corner of Tamar Mephe was a shady corner close to the Dezerteer Bazaar, now this is a lovely corner. 

I have this feeling that owner of Shaurma Club has some great experience in running a business, because all is covered - great service. Shaurma Club work 24/7 and offers home delivery. 

Interior at Shaurma Club in Tbilisi

At first I thought what a great technique they have used to decorate walls here, just latter I realized they have used simple wallpapers (photo wallpapers) 

Shaurma Club logo

Interior at Shaurma Club

Napkin holder at Shaurma club

Interior at Shaurma club

Do more what makes you happy

They have a free Wi-Fi inside and this is one of the rare places in Georgia where it's forbidden to smoke.

Interior at Shaurma Club

The Bottom Line

Shaurma Club on Tamar Mepe is one of the trendiest places for the street food in Tbilisi, they offer 24/7 home delivery and prices here are really modest. Like you can have a big size shaurma for GEL 6.50

• Facebook: Shaurma Club
• Tel: 591 09 77 77

Abandoned Airfield Near P104 (Jaunpils-Tukums) Road (Latvia)

7 November, 2015 | Military Heritage | 26 seen

As I stated in my previous post about beautiful poppy fields near P104 Jaunipils - Tukums road in Latvia, there is a hidden treasure inside those lovely fields - an abandoned airfield. 

I doubt it has been used for any military means, more for agriculture (field spraying from a biplane).

So I headed in and here is what I got:

Abandoned airfield near Tukums

The same concrete plates for runaway structure as seen in Skrunda Abandoned Military Ghost Town

Abandoned airfield

I just love such low profile perspective photography. Grey concrete in contrast to dark blue skies.

Airfield in middle of poppy fields

This is the same poppy field I wrote before

Abandoned airfield in Latvia

I could probably do some of the photography in black and white for my digital photography school project, but I felt there is no need to add drama to this photo story. 

Riga Central Market

6 November, 2015 | Shopping Venues | 32 seen

Riga Central Market as I believe is among of of the top Riga attractions a tourist might want to visit and see. First opened to public in 1930, with main structures of the market built by reusing old German Zeppelin hangars, it now has become Europe's largest market and bazaar.

There are not many markets from which I have seen I could compare this one. The closest I can compare is La Boqueria market in Barcelona, Spain. 

One of the Riga Central market pavilions

In total there are 5 pavilions in Riga central market, each representing it's own sector, like there is a dairy pavilion, meat pavilion, vegetables pavilion, fish pavilion and the 5th pavilion which sortiment I can't recall (if you have an idea, please leave me a comment)

Vegetables for sale at Riga Central Market

The prices are in EUR, and many goods are imported from either Spain or Poland 

Sorrels and potatoes for sale at Riga Central market

It's not gone be a problem to get the right ingredients for your next Sorrel Soup

Riga Central market

Since 1995, the Central Market has been a joint stock company with 100% of its shares owned by Riga City Council. It occupies 72.3 thousand square metres of space and has over 3000 trade stands, each 1 to 100 square metres in size. The market has five pavilions in the historical buildings – they were originally used as Zeppelin hangars. Every day the Central Market – vegetables, dairy produce, meat, fish and grocery pavilions, open areas, manufactured goods market, night market and Farmer’s day-and-night market.

The market is visited by 80 to 100 thousand people a day.

Now this is a tough number to beat even for some supermarket chains

Strawberries for sale at Riga Central market

It was at the end of June we visited Riga Central market, just in time to buy fresh strawberries. 

Strawberries for sale at Riga Central market

Flowers and plants for sale at Riga Central market

We bought a dozens of plants for our rural country house as well we bought a very good cucumber seedlings here

Riga Central Market - The most colorful place in the city

Inside interior of one of the pavilions at Riga Central market

Fruits and vegetables for sale at Riga central market

Riga Central Market

About Riga Central Market

Riga Central Market is Europe's largest market and bazaar in Riga, Latvia. It is one of the most notable structures from 20th century in Latvia and has been included in UNESCO World Heritage Site list together with Old Riga in 1998. It was planned from 1922 and built from 1924 to 1930. The main structures of the market are five pavilions constructed by reusing old German Zeppelin hangars and incorporating Neoclassicism and Art Decostyles. The market is 72,300 square metres (778,000 sq ft) wide with more than 3,000 trade stands.

The joint stock company Rīgas Centrāltirgus is currently owned by the Riga municipality and the Chairman of the Board since 2010 is Anatolijs Abramovs.

Currently, due to the rise of supermarkets, the market is showing similar trends and is seen as a cheap shopping place in Riga, however Riga City Council has expressed priority of preserving the market's mission and cultural value. The main goal of the company's Board of Directors is increase of customer flow throughout the market. They noted that among the problems is petty theft, customer deceit, and homeless people. Administration has determined to take tough measures on sellers that are deceiving customers. In 2009 market renovation plans were proposed and plans conceived in 2010. There are also future plans to join nearby train and bus station into a single complex as well as increase selling of national produce.

History of Riga Central Market

Produce has been sold on the banks of Daugava since 1571 and in 1863 trade stand rows were built. On December 18, 1922, Riga City Council decided to move the crowded and highly unsanitary Daugavmala Market to a new enclosed location in conformity with hygienic and economic requirements. The market's plan was selected in an international competition. One of the highest prizes was received by Riga's architect Pāvils Dreijmanis and engineer S. Žitkovs collaborative proposal to reuse metal frameworks from World War I German Zeppelin hangars Walhalla and Walther used in Vaiņode Air Base. The initial large structure design was impractical due to their size and weather conditions and the new buildings only used the top parts of the hangar design. The buildings themselves were constructed from stone and reinforced concrete.

The construction started in June 1924 and finished in autumn 1930, taking seven years instead of planned five as construction halted during 1926–1928 due to financial problems.

Beautiful Poppy Field Near P104 (Jaunpils-Tukums) Road (Latvia)

5 November, 2015 | Tourism objects | 23 seen

Some might think what's so special with those poppy fields in some place called near P104 road in Latvia, and I might reply - probably there is nothing special, but since we used this bypass road to get to Riga all the Summer along, we just noticed them every time we drove past this district.

Now I took those images on June 26th and today being back in Tbilisi I tried to locate this place on map, unfortunately I couldn't find an easy task to do this (that's why I love cameras with built in GPS), but after some 30 minutes of using Google Street view I finally found the same bus stop I captured here and here you go - this place is located on my travel map as well.

Poppy field near Viesāti

Lovely sunset, lovely field of poppies. Could spend hours here for taking better landscape photography and most probably will repeat photography here.

Turn to Viesāti

This poppy field is located near P104 road connecting Jaunpils to Tukums. 

There is another interesting place hidden in these poppy field - some abandoned airfield - I will publish photos of it anytime soon.

The bottom line

Sometimes taking some bypass road can take you to amazing places you didn't know before.

How To Split Large .TSV files and Import to MS Excel or OpenOffice Using EmEditor

4 November, 2015 | Servers | 76 seen

In this article you will learn how to split large .tsv (and not only) files so you can import them to MS Office, Open Office or whatever you need using a small and neat (paid) program called EmEditor.

Here is the scenario - I have been booking.com affiliate partner for many years already, I remember few years ago I dreamt I wish I would programmatically access to all of their hotels (with metadata) , so I could import those data to some other web app and reuse data I want in manner I want to.

Recently I noticed on my Booking Central there is a new option - Data download, and here it was - All I dreamt for a couple of years ago. Booking.com offered me to download their hotel data in zipped .tsv format. Unarchived my file was about 1GB large.  I tried to import it to both Open Office (Libre Office) and MS Excel, but both programs stopped working and couldn't handle my request. For a moment I felt desperate - I have the data but I can't do much of it.

Booking.com hotel data sets

Now I remembered a few years ago I was building a geospatial web application using data from geonames.org, and back then I was using some tools to split large files into smaller so I could import them to Excel, adjust them how I want and then import data to Drupal using Feeds import.

Unfortunately I couldn't remember what tools I used exactly then, so I started searching on Google, and quickly found tool called EmEditor.

EmEditor is a fast, lightweight, yet extensible, easy-to-use text editor for Windows. Both native 64-bit and 32-bit builds are available!
 

Now EmEditor is not for free (it costs about $40) but it does offer Free Trial version (fully functional) for 30 days.So I downloaded EmEditor, opened my large almost 1GB size .tsv file on it, and stuck for a moment, I couldn't actually find where is that function to split that file. After couple of minutes of searching I finally found this option under Tools - > Split/Combine

EmEditor File Splitter

The Split Current Document to Several Files command allows you to split the current document into several files either every user-specified number of lines, or before every bookmarked line. It also allows you to specify a header and/or footer to each separated file. 

It actually took very little time (less than 2 minutes) to split my 1gb file in six smaller files. And after split was done I opened split files in MS Excel, adjusted filters and was ready to develop further my application for importing data in Drupal.

Try EmEditor.

Hope this helps!

First Summer Solstice in Our New (Old) House

3 November, 2015 | Home Remodeling | 12 seen

Last year we celebrated Summer Solstice on our apartments balcony in Tbilisi, this year we did it the right way. After I tried out how it's to move grass with a scythe, then with a trimmer and finally hiring a professional grass mover we started to repair our recent acquisition, after room and kitchen was cleaned out ouf junk and some paint job was applied both to walls and ceilings we did a test with a first garden party in order to prepare for this Summer Solstice night.

Now we were ready to great Sun. Since our property on that time was without electricity we decided to go creative and lightened a lot of candles and put them into jars, hang up them in trees and got a superb Summer Solstice feeling.

During Summer solstice a fire place is a must have, it symbolizes light's victory over dark, and according to some old legends with fireplaces we are helping sun to win this battle. On the other hand we used one of our fireplaces (we had two) to burn all that old junk, while second one just for heating and ... helping sun to fight that battle.

Author of this blog captured in action

Burning junk and old furniture

Candles in jars - outdoor decoration

Summer Solstice fireplace

Those are actually my first successful night shots, back then I for the first time used longer exposures. To make that image steady I put my DSLR camera on the gorilla pad. And I actually love such perspective of grass. Now I feel much better educated on decent night photography, and even have started a new category posts: Digital Photography School

Night of Summer Solstice

This is probably my favorite photography of that night. Did a 30 second long exposure and illuminated background with flashlight (light painting technique).

About Summer Solstice

The summer solstice occurs when the tilt of a planet's semi-axis, in either northern or southern hemispheres, is most inclined toward the star that it orbits. Earth's maximum axial tilt toward the Sun is 23° 26'. This happens twice each year, at which times the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or the south pole.

The summer solstice occurs during a hemisphere's summer. This is the northern solstice in the northern hemisphere and the southern solstice in the southern hemisphere. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the summer solstice occurs some time between June 20 and June 22 in the northern hemisphere and between December 20 and December 23 each year in the southern hemisphere. The same dates in the opposite hemisphere are referred to as the winter solstice.

When on a geographic pole, the Sun reaches its greatest height, the moment of solstice, it can be noon only along that longitude which at that moment lies in the direction of the Sun from the pole. For other longitudes, it is not noon. Noon has either passed or has yet to come. Hence the notion of a solstice day is useful. The term is colloquially used like midsummer to refer to the day on which solstice occurs. The summer solstice day has the longest period of daylight – except in the polar regions, where daylight is continuous, from a few days to six months around the summer solstice.

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied among cultures, but most recognize the event in some way with holidays,festivals, and rituals around that time with themes of religion or fertility.

Solstice is derived from the Latin words sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).

Ēdole Castle and Emila Market with 17 Cheeses and Crayfish

2 November, 2015 | Tourism objects | 10 seen

Ēdole Castle is a Gothic Revival castle situated on the banks of Ēdole Lake, Ēdole parish, in the historical region of Courland, western Latvia.

I had an opportunity to visit Ēdole castle and taste some of the 17 cheeses few days before Summer Solstice Līgo was held (back n 2015). During my visit a fair called Emīla market (Emīla tirgus) took action.

Famous Latvian film Emīla nedarbi was filmed here in 1985. So that's the reason why this fair is named after Emīls.

If you enjoy medieval things and medieval architecture you will find a lot interesting at Ēdole castle.

Ēdole castle complex

It was pretty hard to photograph here that day - because a lot of visitors attended Emīla market to taste those tasty cheeses and crayfishes, or buy at least some beer for coming Līgo festival.

Edole castle park territory

Visitors of Emila market (Edole castle)

Such trade fairs are pretty popular in Latvia where you can buy goods from local craftsmen, artists or small producers.

It's free to enter castle complex territory but you should be ready to pay some fee for entering the castle.

Inside square at Ēdole Castle

The castle was built for the bishop of Piltene between 1264 and 1267. It was rebuilt in the 16th century and from 1561 until 1920 it was the property of the Baltic-German Baron von Behr and his descendants.

During the 18th century the castle was expanded and from 1835 to 1841 it underwent a major reconstruction work to become one of the first samples of Neo-Gothic architecture in Kurzeme. The building was partly burned during the Russian Revolution of 1905. Between 1906 and 1907 a household yard and tower were built in one of its corners, being the façade remodelled with its Gothic forms preserved.

Removing Junk And Adding First Layer of Paint (Kitchen Works)

1 November, 2015 | Home Remodeling | 6 seen

In my previous article on home remodeling series you already learned how with the help of just a white paint I decided drastically to improve a room which latter might become our bedroom in our rural house. Haven't red that article yet? Go ahead and see it: Room One - Wall and Ceiling Painting with Water Based Paint

Now it was turn for another room (kitchen) to put some facelift on, but before that we had to clean up the mess, remove all the junk and... paint. 

Kitchen loaded with junk

As you can see from above picture both walls and ceiling are covered with soot, Soot is coming from the Kitchener.

There is a stove actually

So we spent about a day just to getting rid from all that junk, so we can get actually access to walls and ceiling.

Our kitchen

I scrapped soot from ceilings, covered the stove with some old wallpapers I found inside the house.

In the background you can see already white painted walls of first room.

Painting windows

You can achieve tremendous effect by just painting your wooden windows.

Adding first layer of paint in our kitchen

As you can see the walls are pretty bad damaged and they ask to be fixed, thanks to the first paint layer I could actually notice those damaged parts and make a plan to fix them (more on that on some of the next home remodeling posts)

Entrance doors and white painted kitchen

The main entrance doors to the house are though the kitchen. I don't know will it stay like this, but I actually don't mind of things they are now.

Beautiful sunset

Shot form the yard. Enjoying a lovely sunset with pink skies are just one of the few benefits owning an old rural house.

As you can see grass fight soon will be won as well. The constructions works are in full swing. No way to look back.

Coming up - fixing those holes in walls and painting floors.

How To Prepare Traditional Uzbek Plov (Lamb and Rice Pilaf)

31 October, 2015 | Food blogger | 37 seen

In this post you will learn how to prepare a traditional Uzbek plov (lamb and rice pilaf.  It might sound as a complicated food to prepare, but in fact if you have the right ingredients and right tools (cooking pot) there is nothing complicated in it.

There are three main ingredients to get that tasty plov done - lamb meat, rice and quince. Since I'm living in Republic of Georgia, it's easy to find all the ingredients here, on the other hand, it might be tricky to get the correct ingredients in other parts of World. For a seasoning there is one must have - a cumin, but unfortunately a seasoning lady I usually buy spices from in Tbilisi, sold me the wrong cumin and there are no cumin in this recipe, but cumin still is must have, to get that special flavor.

So I headed to local Turkish store called Ankara on Aghmanashebeli street in Tbilisi to buy that lamb meat. I took about 1.5 kg of lamb meat. For the second main ingredient I used the regular rices (not special ones) you can buy at your local store, got quince at local market and here you go - a traditional Uzbek plow.

Ingredients: 

• 1kg - lamb meat
• 1kg carrots
• 1kg onions
• 1kg quince
• 1kg rice
• 3 garlic cloves
• 2 glasses of oil
• few tbs of cumin and other seasoning you prefer (salt, pepper) 

Cooking directions

• Add rices to the bowl with water and leave them for about 30 minutes
• Chop lamb meat in pieces and add it to cooking pot. You will need to add some oil here.
• While cooking lamb meat, add chopped onions and grated carrots to the pot, brown them.Add again oil.
• Now add rice and cover them with a water. Once water is gone, add the rest of the oil.
• When meat and rice are getting soft, put sliced quince and garlic cloves at the bottom of you pot (dug them)
• Add cumin and other spices you prefer
• Cook until ready

Total cooking time: ~ 2 hours

And here comes the photos

Rice in a bowl

I always add rice in the bowl filled with A water, just to remove mealiness from rice. 30 minutes are just enough.

Quince fruit

Quince is very important and must have ingredient for a good and tasty traditional Uzbek plov. I got quince at the local Tbilisi market for 4 GEL per kilogram.

Onions

And a lot of onions

Lamb meat

So you basically put that sliced lamb meat on a good cooking pot, fry it a little bit, then add onions, carrots and quince and at the end add rice. You can add cumin seasoning as well. Making a plow requires a lot of time, be ready to cook this delicious Uzbek plov for some 2 hours at lest. 

Traditional Uzbek Plov

​Cooking at home is cool, I will add more cooking related posts to the food blogger section soon.

Now, if you liked this recipe, leave me a comment, spread the word and share this recipe.

How To Carve a Pumpkin and Make Stunning Halloween Photos

31 October, 2015 | Digital Photography School | 9 seen

In this post you will learn how to carve a pumpkin and prepare it for a good photography. Let's call this digital photography school tutorial -  a pumpkin photo session.

Tools you will need: a pumpkin, sharp knife, a marker, candles a DSLR camera and a tripod (for photography)

For a pumpkin I visited local Tbilisi market and bought one for 2 GEL (~0.6$)

Let's start with carving that pumpkin:

Use a marker to draw up lines on the pumpkin

You can use some trafaret or you can just draw by hand. I prefer doing it by hand (although have never tried using a trafaret yet)

Cutting of the top

Start with cutting of the top of your pumpkin, so you can scoop out the flesh

Use a regular table spoon for removing the flesh

Use a sharp knife for cutting out the lines

Since I love to cook I have plenty of knives available, if you don't have a super sharp kitchen knife you can use any regular cutting knife, but be extra cautious

Shape up the lines

Carving Halloween pumpkin

Use flesh to make it look more scary

Halloween Pumpkin Photography

Now it's time to setup a tripod and make Halloween pumpkin photography. I decided to go dark. For camera settings I entered Manual mode and experimented with f5.6 and f11... ISO 100 (I'm shooting on tripod), exposure between 0.3 - 30 seconds. Test for yourself.

For photo editing I used Adobe Lightrooms, but you can create stunning photos using just your camera.

Halloween pumpkin photography

I took my DSLR camera, installed it on tripod and started to experiment. This year I found Christmas tree light diodes working best for my photography.

A pumpkin house photography

Halloween pumpkin photography 2015

Hope you enjoyed this simple Halloween pumpkin carving and photography tutorial. Make sure you check other digital photography school tutorials as well. I would only appreciate if you would follow me on Flickr as well.

Have a spooky Halloween!

Georgian Parliament Building (Kutaisi)

29 October, 2015 | Tourism objects | 72 seen

That day finally come and I have finally photographed the legendary Georgian Parliament building in Kutaisi. After picking up my mom at Kutaisi International Airport and before heading towards to Tbilisi, we made a short excursions around Kutaisi and villages near Kutaisi.

It took me just a few seconds to capture this amazing landscape of futuristic parliament building.

The Georgian Parliament Building in Kutaisi has been the home of the Parliament of Georgia since its inauguration on May 26, 2012, replacing the Parliament building at 8 Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi.

Georgian Parliament building in Kutaisi

I have been dreaming of picture like this for some years already, since 2012 at least. Now, I feel very proud of myself and my photography skills.

The government, during the building's construction, promoted it as a symbol of Georgia's bright, democratic future. Its location in Kutaisi was touted as a boost for the regional economy there as well as a way to knit the country closer together. Critics state that the building is a waste of money, and that having Parliament in Kutaisi, while the rest of the government remains in Tbilisi, is inefficient.

Back in the days I was wondering about possible short future of this parliament building. Read: Mystery with Kutaisi Parliament building

From different sources, I have heard that Parliament will be relocated back to Tbilisi, starting Spring 2013. (Ups, it's still standing there), latest I red an article, that Parliament will be relocated February 2014. (As on October 2015, no information heard of relocation)

I believe it's great that Kutaisi has such interesting architectural building. Of course I would enjoy the view even more if in the background we could see other tall sky scrapers instead just of plain grasslands but hey.. Kutaisi has all the opportunities to attract some fat cats to complete this miracle of architecture. 

It;s said the total cost of this building was about $83,000,000 

Sorrel Soup With Hard-Boiled Eggs (Photo Recipe)

28 October, 2015 | Food blogger | 10 seen

Today we will prepare one of mine all times favorite soup - Sorrel soup.

The idea for this blog post come out of my 365 days photo project, when everyday I'm taking some picture in Manual mode and publish it to my Flickr account. Since the strong jury didn't enjoyed my entry photo with sliced onion for day 13 I was literally taken to the kitchen and all I has to do  - just to photograph. One image speaks thousands words! Enjoy!

Ingredients: Sorrels, carrots, smoked meat, potatoes, dills, parsley, some onion and some seasoning.

Start with grated carrots:

Grated carrot

Chop that meat

Dills and parley

Sliced potatoes

Now bring all the above ingredients to some pot (before you should boil some water in it)

Boiling sorrel soup

Scissors and sorrels

Now, you should add sorrel to your soup at the end. Take scissors and nicely slice your sorrels. You can of course use knife, but I prefer scissors

chopped sorrels

Hard boiled egg

Your sorrel soup ready to be served

If you enjoy my photo recipes please leave a comment, pin some of the images to Pinterest or follow my photo stream on Flickr.

Room One - Wall and Ceiling Painting with Water Based Paint

27 October, 2015 | Home Remodeling | 10 seen

It took us some time to figure out what do next with our recently inherited rural house which was not in her best shape. After I started my fight with grass, (Lawn moving with scythe and Lawn moving with trimmer)  I decided it's time to free up some space inside the house, so we actually have some room to stay for night, for example. Since our major tasks for this summer was actually to change that leaky roof, we were not ready to invest any serious money in building a perfect room, so I bought the cheapest water based paint, some brushes and started to paint.

We decided we will go for a white color, we will make one room completely white (except floor), so at least we have some space which looks decent enough to put in some mattress and probably stay overnight sometime.

It took us some few days actually clean up that room from junk

Room waiting to be painted

The walls was covered with some wallpapers and ceilings was blow out with a chalk. The last time those wallpapers were covered and chalk blown up was some 40 years ago.. Both under wallpapers and under chalk were cardboard plates. So all I had to do was prepare those plates for painting. So I spent some half day to remove wallpapers and scrape off chalk.

Wall furnace and chimney

That's probably an element we enjoy the most, that wall furnace actually does it's job pretty well. It keeps warm inside.

Cleaned walls and ceilings

Water based paint

Half ceilings painted

Tip: Always start with ceilings

Ceilings and one wall painted

Now it starts looking good

Furnace wall painted

Window waiting to be painted

We actually painted window frames in the same day, using window paint

View from Outside

The Bottom Line

As you can see this is not a perfect solution, walls still are uneven, ceilings are not ideal... but instead this is a fast and cheap way, how you can turn that ugly room into something decent.For a better effect you should apply two layers of paint, which is what I didn't for this room (If I would, the effect probably would be even better).

Coming up - floor painting for this room

Café 'Staburadze' Review in Kuldīga (Latvia)

25 October, 2015 | Restaurant reviews | 20 seen

Cafe Staburadze is located on Liepajas street in Kuldiga. Here serves a traditional Latvian cuisine (pork chops and other stuff) and ... I just love this place.

 After I had tried almost all of the Kuldīga cafe's and restaurants I have concluded that exactly cafe Staburadze is among my favorite dining places in lovely Kuldīga town. 

And here are just a few reasons you will love Staburadze as well - it's centrally located in Kuldīga (on central Liepajas street) - it has a budget friendly prices, they serve traditional Latvian cuisine here (pork chops), staff is friendly but what's important - food is just excelent.

Cafe Staburadze building in Kuldiga

Menu at Cafe Staburadze

• Salads, snacks, pork, chicken, beef, fish and desserts. 

Seems they have covered all spectrum of food here. 

Meat balls with boiled potatoes as side dish and cabbage salads

Guess what? I will prepare some of this in one of my next food blog posts.

Solyanka soup

Don't miss solyanka soup once in Latvia. I will definetly add a separate blog post how to prepare this amazing soup at home.

Meat sauce strogonov - yes another reason for another food blog post - how to prepare strogonov.

Dessert at Cafe Staburadze.

The Bottom Line

I will be back to this place and I will order a lot of pork chops, meat balls and tasty desserts. This place knows how to cook!

Diana Krall Concert Review in Tbilisi (Georgia)

24 October, 2015 | Living in Georgia | 11 seen

Diana Krall performed in Tbilisi in frames of Tbilisi Jazz Festival and her own Wallflower World Tour on October 23, 2015. 

We visited this show at Tbilisi Philharmonic hall (Previous time I was here was a concert of a Russian band Aquarium and Boris Grebenshchikov 2014).

During this show some older songs from Diana Krall repertoire, like Fly me to the moon were performed and  of course some new ones. But speaking of me, I most probably enjoyed the most song California Dreamin'. Amazing show, great animated visuals on screen.

The show was set to start at 20:00

Stage is ready for Diana Krall at Tbilisi Jazz Festival 2015

As it happens in such events, show didn't started at 20:00 but at 21:00, so the visitors had plenty time to take selfies and I had plenty time to master my DSLR photography (I took my camera with telephoto lens attached)

Girl with a Polaroid camera

I captured this lovely girl with her Polaroid camera (instant photos)

Tbilisi Philharmonic hall

Our seats were at the balcony and telephoto lens test for my digital photography school project seemed just right solution. So I played a little while waiting show to be started.

Diana Krall at Piano during Tbilisi Jazz Festival

Diana Krall and band performing in Tbilisi, Georgia

Patrick Warren at keyboards

Just amazing how keyboards (Patrick Warren) and piano (Diana Krall) worked together in ideal symphony. And amazingly good photo as well.

Diana Krall and Dennis Crouch (bass)

Diana Krall and band performing California Dreamin' on Tbilisi stage

This was probably the version of California Dreamin' I have enjoyed the most. Just amazing.

The Bottom Line

I must admit I was not familiar with Diana Krall until few years ago I was "educated" on Jazz music drinking wine and listening to classics like Louis Armstrong and other, and then.. then I was introduced to great works of Diana Krall. Speaking of this night - Absolutely brilliant show spent in pleasant company. 

About Diana Krall

Diana  Krall, OC, OBC (born November 16, 1964) is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer, known for her contralto vocals. She has sold more than 6 million albums in the US and over 15 million worldwide. On December 11, 2009,Billboard magazine named her the second Jazz artist of the 2000–09 decade, establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time.
Krall is the only jazz singer to have eight albums debuting at the top of the Billboard Jazz Albums. To date, she has won five Grammy Awards and eight Juno Awards. She has also earned nine gold, three platinum, and seven multi-platinum albums.