As with any “Spontaneous” picture, I could pick out a bunch of flaws in this image, yet I love the expressions on the boys faces. I found this situation in a market in Aqaba, Jordan.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “The Extraordinary.” I’m entry number 264.

I’ve noticed a trend. Every time that I come back from travelling and write a blog about it I start with the words “only a fool would…” Spend a whole winter in Norway? Check. Three countries in one weekend? Count me in! Christmas in Iceland? Absolutely.

This time it was cycling from Prague to Meißen, nearly 230km or around 45km a day. If you get on your bike regularly that might not sound like much, but I’m what you’d call a fair weather cyclist. And the weather in the UK this summer has been neither fair nor summery. So as I sat on the plane at Heathrow I was both nervous and excited. I would get to see a lot of great towns and scenery en route, but I’d have to work for it.

Here is my rather delayed entry for this weeks PhotoFriday, “Relationship.” It’s the second picture I took in Vietnam, a couple overlooking the lake at the centre of Hanoi. Any resemblance to this entry least year is entirely coincidental.

Full news on her own website, but today B said her “Affirmation of allegiance” and gained British Nationality. She was a little unhappy about having to pledge allegiance to the Queen so I’ve made a minor edit to the original picture.

I commented that a lot of our government clearly have not had to make such a pledge themselves. If they too had to respect democracy and freedom I think we’d be hearing rather less about 42 days in gaol without trial and ID cards. (End of rant.)

My entry for this weeks PhotoFriday is this image of a Police exercise in Warsaw, Poland.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Old Fashioned.” I’m entry number 248.

This weeks PhotoFriday is “Old Fashioned.” Here is my entry. You really can’t beat Cuba for that retro, old fashioned look, and here is a great example of a 1950’s American car, still apparently in use and in great condition.

We climbed Mount Sinai at night, our torches illuminating just a few metres around us and the vastness of the surrounding landscape shrouded in darkness. Just after six in the morning the sun started to rise allowing us to see the Beauty of the area. “Beauty,” of course, is this weeks PhotoFriday theme.

Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Awful!” I’m entry number 91.

On our recent trip to Tuscany, B bought a cheap local bottle of wine not because of the wine itself — we’ve not dared taste it yet — but because the bottle was pretty. It’s been sat on the dining room table since then, gathering dust.

Last weekend I decided to take a few pictures of it. It’s not my normal kind of photography but the results were fairly respectable I think.

The Cinque Terre — a series of small, connected coastal villages — has been on my, admittedly rather long, list of places to visit for some time, but when I first flew out to Tuscany I didn’t quite know how achievable it would be. Sure, Google Maps said that it would be a two hour drive from the villa, but I wasn’t completely sure that I was using the right address and I have been late several times when relying on directions cribbed from the Internet.

Walled cities are a Tuscan specialty. I’d been to a few in the last couple of weeks and, on paper, Arezzo looked to be another gem in the making.

However shortly after arriving things did not look quite so promising. Although an old city, much of what you can see on first entering the city is dull, generic office buildings, including one company amusingly called “multiass.”

Inside the city walls things immediately get… confusing. I walk down a street. To my right is a church, ahead are a mess of signs pointing in every direction, each one presumably a place of interest. With no guide book on the city I had no real idea what any of them were and arbitrarily picked “right.”