World Cup, Exploratorium

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I was cheering for France up until the fiasco at the end, and then I didn't really care any more. I just wanted to throw stuff at the guy with the cell phone.

After the game, we went to the Exploratorium, an interactive science museum. It's basically one giant room full of exhibits (with a mezzanine): visitors can walk anywhere and touch anything. A helpful museum visitor was watching Vince (a computer engineer) play with one of the experiments and began to teach him about how electricity works. I had fun clapping my hands in the giant echo tube (the echoes sound like gunshots from old westerns). Everyone else had equally entertaining experiences.

The best part: after the museum closes, guests who pay a premium and reserve early (read: us!) are brought to the back of the museum to the Tactile Dome, which is a twisty-turny labyrinth with absolutely no light at all. You cannot see a thing, and they put all sorts of fun objects on the walls so you can try to guess what they are. I think we were having way too much fun in there and annoying the supervisor. Before we were finished, the lights turned on and we were asked to leave (there was some excuse about a fire alarm or something). We got free tickets to visit the Exploratorium, but we'll have to pay to get into the Tactile Dome again.

Afterwards we walked around outside (there's a Palace of Fine Arts, which is a huge, seemingly purposeless monument) and ate some food at an awesome restaurant called Pluto's (picked completely at random, and what a delight).

A scant set of pictures is in my World Cup and Palace of Fine Arts photo album.