Though I've mainly been working this weekend, doing final preparations for the upcoming Google Lunar X PRIZE Team Summit, I did manage to have a little fun. For those of you who won't be able to join us--or who are planning very short trips, I wanted to share in a few of the highlights.

• I was joined by the rest of the core Google Lunar X PRIZE Team--Brett, Becky, Mike, and Pierre-Damien--on Saturday. We celebrated with a lovely meal at a restaurant called Chez Yvonne, one of my favorites from my days as a student here. I was able to introduce the crew to several Alsacienne (Alsatian) specialties. The highlights for me were the Choucroute garnie a l'Alsacienne and a nice bottle of Gewurztraminer. I wouldn't exactly call the Head cheese a highlight, but perhaps Brett would disagree.
• I also enjoyed a nice meal on Saturday with our main point of contact at Universal Space Networks, Jay. We had some great conversation over some nice tarte flambée
• Lest you think it was all food (and I haven't even mentioned the döner kebabs!), I'll mention that we enjoyed a very lovely trip on one of the Strasbourg boat tours. Some photos in the album below, hopefully video to come at some point
• I used some photo stitching software (which I also mentioned in a blog post long ago) to finally take some decent pictures of Strasbourg's awe-inspiring cathedral. See two different versions in the Picasa Album below. I'm trying to get better at stitching, so comments are appreciated!
• We returned to the Cathedral later on to escape a rain storm, and ended up catching a good portion of an organ recital. The music--several pieces by Olivier Messiaen, were a bit dissonant for my tastes, but certainly impressive, as was the instrument itself. Mike, the newest member of our team (and a great and fascinating guy) was a music major at MIT, and so we also got to learn a bit about Messiaen, which was cool.

We also filmed some short welcoming pieces which you'll see on YouTube eventually--along with those previously promised directions to help you get to ISU!

Wish you were here...