Glorious autumn dusk

Above: ul. Baletowa during the evening rush hour. It's interesting to note that the concentrations of rat-running cars that clog up the back roads of suburban Warsaw are far more dispersed in the evenings. At eight in the morning, traffic is stationary here; at six in the evening, it's moving freely.

A month ago, I felt that this year we'd miss our glorious Polish autumn, the babie lato. How wrong I was. Days like today - cloudless from dawn to dusk - make one delighted to be alive. It's a beautiful evening. If not for the occasional waft of bonfire in my nostrils, this could be 10pm in August rather than 6pm in late October. The earth exhales the warmth of the day's sun. It was +17C this afternoon.

Right: A brace of Airbus A320s; one's just taken off from Okęcie, the other's flying over Warsaw at 30,000 ft. The cheap flight boom is coming to an end. WizzAir, whose plane is seen taking off, has slashed many of its flights to the UK, in response to falling numbers of Polish migrants heading to jobs there. Falling oil prices may yet keep the business afloat for a while, but global economic downturn plus concerns about climate change will mean that the Golden Era of Low Cost Air Travel is behind us.

Left: Walking down ul. Dumki after sunset, I take this snap of a house on ul. Trombity that's just having a first floor added to it. The roof came off over the summer, the new kondignacja was built, and the roof came back, just ten feet higher. The Vibration Reduction feature on my Nikkor 18-200mm lens means I can hand hold at half a second with the lens at the widest.