Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: AS200

The City Hotel was also shown two photos ago. Here I've done a closeup to show the beehive sculpture up near the roof. I had never noticed it before, so I figured I'd photograph it. One of Prague's main advantages for photography is that there are many hidden or less-than-obvious details to photograph.

The U Pinkasu hospoda (pub) was the first hospoda to be officially a "Plzenska Restaurace," sponsored by the Plzensky Prazdroj (Pilsener Urquell) brewery. I think the building is a bit older, though.

This is the Mustek end of Vaclavske Namesti. That building with the clock is called literally the "Clockhouse," and is now home to the New Yorker clothing store, although the building is much older. You can see it in old movies. The Baroque building to the left is the City Hotel.

This was my first proper photo since getting back. You can see the Austrian Cultural Centre, the Schlogl music store, the largest Bat'a store in the world, and the square itself.

This is Hohestrasse, or literally "High Street" in Koln, which by the time I took this photo had mostly been closed for the night. I walked along it anyway, though, as I had nothing better to do. I had to catch the sleeper train for Prague later in the night.

This jewellery store was entirely covered in what looked like Christmas lights. This might be the usual lighting, but I doubt it because of the costs and maintenance involved. It was still less than two weeks after New Year's, so I figured they still hadn't taken down the Christmas decorations yet.

Here's a side view of the Cathedral.

These are the spires of Koln, or Cologne, Cathedral, which were what made it the largest building in the world. The Washington Monument surpassed it, and today it can only claim to be the world's second-largest church, after the Ulm Minster, which is 161.5 metres tall as opposed to the Koln Cathedral's 157 metres.

This shot came out better than I was expecting. I bumped the contrast up by 10% in Gimp, and removed some dust, but ultimately that's all I had to do to it. The thumbnail actually made it look worse. This might be my best photo of Koln Hbf, at least at night.

Built between 1248 and 1880, Koln Cathedral is Germany's most-visited tourist destination, with 20,000 people visiting daily (on average). The spires are even taller than they look here, at 157 metres, making them the second tallest in the world. They also made Koln Cathedral briefly the tallest building in the world, from 1880 to 1884. Interestingly for Americans, the Washington Monument was the building which surpassed it, not the Eiffel Tower. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_and_struc... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cologne_Cathedral

This wasn't from the summit of Black Mountain, where we were climbing, but it was as high as we got. We at least were slightly above the clouds, as you can see.

This was another one of my shots from the Abergavenny hiking trip. This one's a little bit dark and I'm not entirely thrilled how the edit came out, but it is still good enough, I think, to continue the series.

This is later, at the Carpenter's Arms. I tried this shot with and without a flash, and this is the one without.

Here's another shot of the landscape near Abergavenny.

I think that the oddness of this photo may have to do with a camera error or bad film. I can't tell. One way or another, I think it's a more interesting shot than what I was expecting.

This was the first pub on the hiking route, but we continued in order to save daylight. We returned later.

This is an Alstom (BR) Class 175 Coradia DMU. They were intended as a new generation of DMU that could operate at 125 m.p.h., although this was quickly downgraded to 110 and then to 100. 125 m.p.h. DMU's were eventually produced (in the form of the Virgin Voyager and BR Class 180), but the 175 Coradia never ended up filling such a role. Originally introduced in 2000 on First North Western, they have since been transferred to Arriva Trains Wales. Given the absurdity of the BR privatisation scheme, they have never been owned by a railway or Train Operating Company (TOC), but are instead owned by Angel Trains and leased to the TOC's, at much greater expense to the taxpayer. On this trip, I was on my way to Abergavenny for some hiking.

This display of candles was isolated from the rest, depicting a heart and his birth and death years, which were 1936-2011. My sense is that before the candles got moved around, it was easier to read.