Zeum

Today was an in-service day at school, so Jeffrey had the day off. We decided to take the day off, too, and thought we’d do something different, so we headed to San Francisco via Caltrain.

Caltrain is slow, but it does take the worry out of parking — I guess that was a good tradeoff. It’d’ve been better if we’d brought something to read on the trip up; Jeffrey finished his book before we got out of Santa Clara County, and the scenery is less than wonderful. But in the end, we got to San Francisco and walked up in the direction of the Sony Metreon to have lunch.

The Metreon has a very nice food court, far better than that in most malls. And the restaurant we went to, Buckhorn Grill, was quite reasonably priced and tasty — I’m surprised the place wasn’t packed.

After lunch, we left the Metreon and went to Zeum, an interactive art and science center for 8-18 year-olds. I’d read a little bit about it and thought it might be worth a visit — it was! Their main attraction is called “Build It!” and offers many ways for visitors to make things — I tried building a house of cards, which didn’t get very far, while Jeffrey zoomed in on the Lego Wall. After a while, we went to look for Diane, who had gotten involved in making a clay character to use in making a stop-motion animation. In the meantime, Jeffrey made a structure in the Megaopolis room (under the direction of Spike and Jeff), then joined us in the Animation studio, where I was helping Diane with her masterpiece. We spent the rest of the afternoon there, making movies, and a good time was had by all (except, perhaps, the characters, who seemed to have a rough life after Jeffrey started to direct).

When we left Zeum, we went in search of a bookstore to stock up for the trip home — that turned out to be a harder task than I would have expected, but we found a small book department in the Virgin Megastore and made do. Dinner was back at the Metreon (Jeffrey and Diane tried the Firewood Restaurant; I hit the Buckhorn again), then we dashed to the station in time to make the 6pm express train south.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back on Caltrain, this time to PacBell Park. We had thought about staying overnight in San Francisco instead of commuting, but the hotel we wanted wasn’t able to guarantee a suitable room (and I had a hard time contemplating paying $35/night for parking, too), so we opted to spend tonight at home instead.

Shabbat Shalom!