Here are some photos from our recent trip to Europe. Kaori and I both had colds so we took things easy and just enjoyed relaxing and soaking up the atmosphere.

We started in Aachen, where we visited Jurgen. He took us to the Christmas market and spent two days showing us the sights around his beautiful town. It was really cold, but we loved what we saw.

These first photos are from the Christmas market.

This is the square behind the ancient spa house.

Jurgen took us to Monschau, an old village at the foot of a steep valley that escaped the alllied bombing of WWII that destroyed so much of Germany. It’s really unique.

It was really cold and the Gluhwein, a hot spiced wine, was very welcome.

We caught the train to Paris, both feeling really under the weather with our colds. We didn’t pack in as much as we could, but still had a lot of fun wandering around and hanging out in bakeries and restaurants. We’ve been to Paris before and didn’t feel we needed to visit all the tourist sites – we just enjoyed the atmosphere.

We stayed in the St Germain district, home to many famous cafes and within easy walking to to the Latin Quarter and the attactions in the center of the city.

This bakery had the most wonderful breads.

This beautiful cafe was open early so we came here for coffee and pastries.

In France and Germany, you can still do your shopping at local shops, like this greengrocers, with their wares spilling out onto the street.

Not a bad photo for two sick people.

I developed a medium format film last weekend shot with my Hasselblad. I was shocked to see that most of the photos on this film, as well as a 35mm film I developed at the same time, are of the two ladies I share my house with. Or is that the two ladies who run my house?

The first two were taken during a brunch in Willow Glen and the other two were taken on a walk around Campbell. They are all natural light photos with no light modifiers. I used Kodak Tri-X film rated at ISO 200 and developed it with Kodak C-76.

Here are some 35mm photos taken with the same film and developed in the same way as my previous Hasselblad post. When scanning the negatives, I included the sprocket holes for some of the images just for that retro effect.

The boys spent three days backpacking 8-9,000 feet up in the Sierra Nevada mid-October. It was perfect weather during the day, although cold enough at night to be a bit uncomfortable sleeping on the ground.

We gathered around the camp fire at night.

We fished for dinner.

We all caught fish and had as much to eat as we wanted!

My survival knife came in handy for preparing dinner.

We kept the tents at home and slept under the milky way and shooting stars just as it should be.

A mule train passed by, taking supplies to a group camped out on the other side of the lake.

Stopping for the horses to drink.

It was tough hiking on the mountain trails, but we had a wonderful time, shared many stories, and enjoyed new experiences. Until next time….