Wednesday, April 23, 2014

ХРИСТОС ВОСКРЕСЕ!

Pascha is here again.  We celebrated as we always do - with lots of church during Holy Week, the baking of kulich, dyeing of eggs, taking the kids to church at midnight, Easter baskets and our annual Pascha party.  I did not do a great job of getting photos of most of these events this year, but here is what I have.

Cooling kulich in "vintage" coffee cans and new Moscow-purchased specialty pans.



Bleary-eyed kiddos getting ready to head to church at midnight.



Breaking the fast with kulich, paskha, prosciutto and cheese after church.



Morning Easter baskets.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Staycation, continued

Our staycation is long since over, but I still have some photos to post. 

We spent a few mornings exploring parts of the town we hadn't seen yet.  On my list was this church, that sits on a ridge to the south above the Old Town. 


We didn't know what it was called, nor how to get there, but we were able to use our GPS to find it when we were in the vicinity.  Turned out it is a small monastery, and there was a service going on. I did not take photos inside the church, which was lovely.




The view was fantastic.


We next went to the Metekhi Church, which stands on a cliff on the left bank of the Mtkvari River.


The statue of King Vakhtang Gorgasali in front of the church is very often photographed from the north, but the sun was in the wrong place at the time we were there, so here he is from the back.



Tbilisi really is a beautiful city.

 

It was a very windy day - check out the water fountain.


After all that touring, we were hungry.  We went down to the Turkish restaurant row in the Marjanishvili district and checked out the Ankara cafeteria.  The food was great, with lots of Lenten options (and some really yummy looking meat dishes that we will check out after Pascha).