(I stopped doing this photo blog a while ago because I don’t believe many people are looking at it and it just seemed too sad to continue writing stuff no-one’s reading.   Nevertheless, with the new year, I thought I’d do a couple of posts with photos I liked.)

I went to Krakow in late summer 2016, and stayed on my own in an apartment in the old town for a week.  It was very noisy all night with people talking, drinking, and laughing – particularly on the Friday and Saturday when the noise really didn’t die down until about 6am.  Difficult when it’s hot and you want the window open.

There are horses and carts giving rides to tourists in the main square, and I would keep hearing the sound of horses hooves from my room as they passed along the street below, all day and until late at night, and I would go and look out of the window at what colour the horses were.  I’m a bit obsessed with horse colours for some reason, and I liked the way they were so nicely paired up – two white, two dapple grey, two brown, two skewbald etc.  I particularly liked this unusual appaloosa colour on the photo – big brown spots.  I’ve never seen a horse that colour in England.

I do recommend Krakow as an introduction to Poland – it’s a lovely old city with lots of historical stuff to see, plus wonderful shops and loads of cafes and restaurants to try.  Right at the end of the week I discovered the more modern side of the city – a huge three storey shopping centre near the railway station that I thought was more impressive than any I can think of in London!

The trumpet call that is played from the main church every hour is so interesting and impressive – to think that it has sounded every single hour for something like 700 or 800 years to commemorate the death by arrow of the person sounding an alarm call.  Very profound to think that the poor man himself could never have guessed that that would happen for so very long after his death.