Tonight I had dinner with friends I have managed to make at work in the last 18 months. They surprised me with two gifts, one a book on Grenoble chosen because it has a photo of my favorite bar where I initiated a habit of meeting for drinks with colleagues after work on Fridays, something common in the US but not so here. The second gift was a large book on the photographer Robert Doisneau, arguably the most famous French photographer who took the renowned image Le baiser de l’hôtel de ville (”Kiss by the Hotel de Ville”).

I tried in my inadequate French to tell them they had touched my heart, Vous avez touché mon coeur.

I had my smaller digital camera with me (not the SLR), but unfortunately I had not loaded a memory card in it, so I have no photos of the dinner. They would have only been pale reflections of what my memories of the evening will be.

After we parted, I returned to my apartment, retrieved a memory card for the camera, and took what may very well be my last opportunity to take photos in the center of town. After one hour, I had taken 112 photos, possibly more than I had taken in my entire sojourn in Europe, and definitely more than I took on any single photography expedition when I was using a film camera.

It is now almost a quarter to two in the morning here, I am stealing some sleep time to write this post before my final week here in France starts with the hectic activity that it will involve. Monday through Wednesday will be wrapping things up at work. My belongings will be packed and shipped on Thursday, Friday is dedicated to cleaning up the apartment, and Saturday will be the day those who have bought my appliances come to get their new possessions.

Sunday may be the first time I have a chance to breathe. I leave on a high speed train (TGV) for Paris on Monday, 5 December, at 5AM.

I don’t have the time to even review all 112 photos I took this evening. However, one does stand out:

(click on the photo for a larger version)

I think I’ll ultimately convert this one to black and white, but I don’t have the time tonight to tweak it.

Since the photos were all taken after 11:30PM, many while it was snowing, the flash was not useful for the majority. I have a lot of cleaning up to do for these images; perhaps I will be able to do it on the flight back to the US.

UPDATE: Here is a quick and dirty conversion of the photo to black and white, I’m sure you can see the change in the mood created in the image.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, photos, photos of Europe, photos of Grenoble, pictures