No, not alphabet soup...the airport codes of the cities I've traveled to/through the past few weeks. I spent two weeks in Europe (London to Paris back to London), by way of Toronto, and then visited two of Northwest Airlines' three hubs just days before their "It might be a great idea to hire too few pilots to fly all of our planes - instead let's cancel 13% of our flights" drama. Luckily, other than a few painful three hour delays, everyone involved made it safely to Dubuque, Iowa for my cousin's wedding last weekend.
Some photographic highlights of my journey to Europe (sorry, no Iowa pics yet - camera cord is MIA): 
The inside of a temple ("the temple") in London which is apparently featured in The Da Vinci Code...who knew? I have never really been one to get in on big trendy books/movies (i.e. I have never read any of the Harry Potter books, and only went to one of the movies, under duress), but this temple was really quite cool - though it's only open for about an hour at a time, at random intervals throughout the week. 
My trip involved lots of visits to different museums, including the British Museum, where we viewed lots of stolen artifacts that the British have, over time, accumulated from distant and ancient civilizations...and then held onto, even when other countries (Greece, most notably) have asked for them back.
One of my favorite things to do while traveling is go to parks...I'm not really one of the "let's go tour every major landmark and famous thing in the whole city" type of tourists. So I went to this cool park in Paris for an afternoon, and found myself in the middle of a water fight! This park ranger (not pictured) had taken a ball away from these little boys, because they were
being rowdy. To get their ball back, they taunted the park guy and started spraying him with water...trying to entice him away from his post long enough that their compatriots would be able to get the ball back. He chased them and chased them and pulled one down by his little ear! Soon, all mutiny had broken loose, with the little boys ganging up on him, the park-goers clapping for the boys. They got their ball back, but no without some collateral damage (like the guy pictured above, who got sprayed by some little boy).
Insert here some artsy type picture of a church (I forget the name), where we were somewhat mesmerized by a loooooong parade of people marking Pentecost. 
When I was in high school debate, Foucault was one of my favorite philosophers, so I was pretty excited to see this pendulum with his moniker. The rest of the building was pretty great, too, including the tomb of Victor Hugo, one of my favorite writers. 
I didn't feel the need to climb to the top of Notre Dame with my friend, but the famous rose windows inside I thought were very beautiful. The number of candles lit inside was pretty amazing, too. 
Perhaps the oddest touristy but non-touristy place we went was the museum of the Parisian sewer system...we got to see these (fake) rats in their natural habitat! They let you climb down into the sewer and see how things work - pretty neat, and it didn't smell *that* bad. 
And, of course, as a modern art fan I had to see the Pompidou and the Tate...my friend lives literally right behind the Tate (this picture was taken from the quad/lawn in front of his dorm). Pretty great place to take a nap (another of my favorite things to do in foreign countries - though apparently not really smiled upon when you do it in the middle of a Parisian traffic circle. Whoops!).
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