Saturday, February 20, 2010

jurassic night at scitech

There is a nice science museum at Khobar Corniche. Like most important landmarks in the Kingdom, it's named after a royal figure: Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Science and Technology Center (aka Scitech). The 35,000 square ft. facility is a nice, modern building housing an IMAX theatre and a number of galleries. Currently it's hosting an exhibition on dinosaurs, so I took the kids for a visit last evening. They were thrilled to see the big moving and roaring monsters and the replica of a T. Rex skeleton. The permanent exhibits were also interesting, most of them interactive with bilingual explanations and descriptions. My younger son, the more adventurous of the two, and I posed with a live snake, about a meter-and-a-half long, for a photograph. It's a nice place to spend an evening with the family. The gift shop and cafeteria were disappointing, though.

A bonus attraction last night was a street performance in front of the Museum by a Saudi dance troupe.